The Serpentine Pavilion

Like a mutant kaleidoscopic caterpillar, the Serpentine Pavilion slowly crawls its way across London’s Kensington Gardens.

Like a mutant kaleidoscopic caterpillar slowly crawling its way across London’s Kensington Gardens, looking (were it smaller) as if it should be smoking a hookah and sitting on a toadstool, this year’s Serpentine Pavilion (until 18 October) is a brightly coloured structure made from PTT fabric and webbing stretched over a framework of tunnels. It may be rather pupal in appearance – like a pre-hatched insect undergoing a transformation  – but in this case, metamorphosis has already taken place. Its beauty becomes truly apparent when you walk inside the temporary building or see it lit up at night. In the dark, the bold colours of the day take on yet another dimension.

Serpentine Galleries is one of the city’s most prestigious locations for contemporary art and architecture shows. Every year since 2000 the gallery has commissioned an international architecture practice to create the Serpentine Pavilion, a temporary building that sits in the gallery grounds during the UK’s variably-weathered summer, June to October. This year Spanish architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano, who established the Madrid-based firm selgascano in 1998, were selected to create the latest pavilion edition for the 15th anniversary year. It may come as no particular shock to find out that Selgas and Cano work in their own cocoon-like structure in the middle of a forest outside of Madrid.

Read the full article in COVER 40.