The 20th Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace, directed by Sumayya Vally, will open on 11 June 2021. A TIME100 Next List honoree, Vally is the youngest architect to be commissioned for this internationally renowned architecture programme. The Serpentine Pavilion 2021 is being supported by Goldman Sachs for the seventh consecutive year.
The Pavilion design is based on past and present places of meeting, organising and belonging across London. The forms in the Pavilion are a result of abstracting, superimposing and splicing architectural elements, varying in scales of intimacy, from various locations, translating the shapes of London into the Pavilion structure in Kensington Gardens. A specially commissioned sound programme for the Pavilion, Listening to the City, will feature work by artists including Ain Bailey and Jay Barnard, connecting visitors to the stories and sounds of lost spaces across London.
The Pavilion references the architecture of places of worship, markets, restaurants, bookshops and local cultural institutions that are particularly relevant to migrant communities in neighbourhoods such as Brixton, Hoxton, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Edgware Road, Barking and Dagenham, Peckham and Notting Hill, among others. During the summer, fragments of the Pavilion will be installed in neighbourhoods across the city, to support and facilitate gatherings and impromptu interactions, to honour the history of places that have held communities over time.
