EXPERIMENTS IN ARCHITECTURE _ WITH PRACTICE SELGAS CANO

Selgas and Lucía Cano have been selected to design the 15th Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens this year. Architecutal practice SelgasCano is the first Spanish designers of the temporary pavilion that is constructed every summer outside the Serpentine Gallery, which has previously been created by Peter Zumthor, Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel.

The designs are expected to combine the architects’ interests in synthetic materials and new technologies with their enthusiasm for the natural world. SelgaCano’s own office is a see-throuth woodland tunnel  and the duo has already announced they plan to use “transparency” as the main idea and material of their proposal.

They say: “We are going to use only one material as a canvas for both – the transparency. That ‘material’ has to be explored in all its structural possibilities, avoiding any other secondary material that supports it, and the most advanced technologies will be needed to be employed to accomplish that transparency.”

Selgas and Cano founded their studio in 1998. Serpentine Gallery directors Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist describe the Spanish practice as “the perfect choice to celebrate the pavilion’s 15th anniversary”. And they go on: “SelgasCano are architects for our time who offer a tantalising vision of the future. Their innovative use of materials, bold application of colour, informed by playfulness and a passion for nature ensures that next summer’s pavilion will be very exciting”.

THE PAVILION AT
SERPENTINE GALLERY
KENSINGTON GARDENS
LONDON