At 41 he is the youngest architect to accept the invitation to design a temporary structure for the Serpentine Gallery, in Kensington Gardens, London. Past Pavilions have included designs by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Frank Gehry (2008) and Zaha Hadid, designer of the inaugural structure in 2000.
On lawn in front of the Serpentine Gallery, Fujimoto’s delicate, latticed structure of 20mm-wide steel poles will have a lightweight and semi-transparent appearance that aims to blend, cloud-like, into the landscape and against the classical backdrop of the gallery’s colonnaded East wing. Designed as a flexible, multi-purpose social space – with a cafe inside – visitors will be encouraged to enter and interact with the pavilion throughout its four-month tenure in London’s Kensington Gardens.
Fujimoto is the third Japanese architect to design the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, following Toyo Ito (2002) and Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA (2009).
