Smiljan Radic to design 14th Serpentine Galleries Pavilion

Chilean architect Smiljan Radic was commissioned by Serpentine Gallery to design the 2014 Serpentine Galleries Pavilion. Designed by big-name architects since 2000, the temporary pavilion has become a major summer attraction in London's Kensington Gardens for the London Festival of Architecture.

Reflective of Radic's past works, his design for the pavilion is a semi-transparent, shell-like "pod" that will serve as a multi-functional public space and venue.

Read on for more details about the project.

"Occupying a footprint of some 350 square metres on the lawn of the Serpentine Gallery, plans depict a semi-translucent, cylindrical structure, designed to resemble a shell, resting on large quarry stones. Radic’s Pavilion has its roots in his earlier work, particularly The Castle of the Selfish Giant, inspired by the Oscar Wilde story, and the Restaurant Mestizo, part of which is supported by large boulders."

"Designed as a flexible, multi-purpose social space with a café sited inside, the Pavilion will entice visitors to enter and interact with it in different ways throughout its four-month tenure in the Park. On selected Friday nights, between July and September, the Pavilion will become the stage for the Serpentine’s Park Nights series, sponsored by COS: eight site-specific events bring together art, poetry, music, film, literature and  theory and include three new commissions by emerging artists Lina Lapelyte, Hannah Perry and Heather Phillipson. Serpentine Galleries Pavilion 2014 launches during the London Festival of Architecture 2014."

"Smiljan Radic, designer of the fourteenth Serpentine Pavilion, said:  'The Serpentine 2014 Pavilion is part of the history of small romantic  constructions seen in parks or large gardens, the so-called follies, which were hugely popular from the end of the 16th Century to the start of the 19th. Externally, the visitor will see a fragile shell suspended on large quarry stones. This shell - white, translucent and made of fibreglass - will house an interior organised around an empty patio, from where the natural setting will appear   lower, giving the sensation that the entire volume is floating. At night, thanks to the semi-transparency of the shell, the amber tinted light will attract the attention of passers-by, like lamps attracting moths.'

AECOM will again provide engineering and technical design services, as it did for the first time in 2013. In addition, AECOM will also be acting as cost and project manager for the 2014 Pavilion. While this is the second Serpentine Pavilion for AECOM, its global chief executive for building engineering, David Glover, has worked on the designs for a majority of the Pavilions to date."

"Smiljan Radic’s design follows Sou Fujimoto’s cloud-like structure, which was visited by almost 200,000 people in 2013 and was one of the most visited Pavilions to date. Previous Pavilions have been designed Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei, 2012; Peter Zumthor, 2011; Jean Nouvel, 2010; Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA, 2009; Frank Gehry, 2008; Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen, 2007; Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond, with Arup, 2006; Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura with Cecil Balmond, Arup, 2005;  MVRDV with Arup, 2004 (un-realised); Oscar Niemeyer, 2003; Toyo Ito and   Cecil Balmond - with Arup, 2002; Daniel Libeskind with Arup, 2001; and Zaha Hadid, who designed the inaugural Pavillion in 2000."

See previous Serpentine Pavilions here.

Click the thumbnails below for Radic's previous works.