Temporality

Over the past eight summers, the Serpentine Gallery’s pavilion program has become one of the best ideas in the art world – focusing on the public’s experience of temporary structures at the intersection of art and architecture. Every year, the gallery invites an international architect to design a temporary pavilion and the open brief has resulted in somewhat of a fantasy football league for architects, showcasing innovative and experimental structures they most likely wouldn’t get funding for otherwise.

Last weekend, I went to see this year’s design - a collaborative effort between artist Olafur Eliasson (behind the Weather Project in Tate Modern) and Norwegian architect Kjetil Thorsen

A steel and timber clad structure reminiscing a cross section between a shark attack and a giant spinning-top. A wide spiraling ramp winds twice around the exterior, rising from the lawns of the gallery and ending with a viewpoint over Kensington Gardens. The structure’s interior is supposed to function as a ‘laboratory’ for artistic/scientific public experiments. This temporary building does more than look pretty and keep the rain out. Actually, I wouldn’t say it was pretty at all. Its an odd looking structure you need to experience with your body and less with your eyes.

Within art, design and architecture, the current escalating trends seems to be temporary experiences and structures, experimenting with how space works and how people can affect a built structure as much as the structure can affect them.

Watch this space for an update of future temporary structures taking place around London.

Check out Olafur Eliassons’ studio website, which he calls a laboratory for spatial research