Jean Nouvel's new blaze of red steel in London's Hyde Park is the tenth in the Serpentine Gallery's series of summer pavilions, whose past pedigree of architects includes Zaha Hadid, Oscar Niemeyer and Saana, to reel off a few. Rarely one for quiet gestures, the French architect - whose previous projects include Paris' Institut du Monde Arabe and the Copenhagen Concert Hall - has created a bold geometrical structure with a soaring, 12m tall cantilevered wall. Here, we see it under construction and take a look at the full series of experimental pavilions.
Watch the film of Nouvel's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion under construction
Nouvel's design consists of a series of retractable awnings and freestanding walls. It's a fluid, open space whose glass roofs and fabric screens manipulate the light to often hallucinatory effect. 'I wanted to play with the diffusion of light and diffraction of the surrounding images,' he explains. Inspired by British icons, like the London bus and the post box, the flaming structure is the first Serpentine pavilion to embrace colour. Says Nouvel: 'It's a symphony of different reds.'
Last year's floating pavilion by Saana inspired a high level of interaction from the public and this year's looks set to do the same. The pavilion invites people to play - be it with its ping pong tables or chess boards - and the space is strewn with an eclectic collection of benches, stools and mattress-like pouffes in varying shades of red. It may be a little haphazard for our liking, but it's intentionally so. 'I want disorder in this place,' says Nouvel.
This year's pavilion will also be home to the Serpentine café and a series of talks. Each year the architects are given just six months to complete their structures from the moment they are invited. Says Nouvel of his pavilion: 'It's not meant to be a perfect exercise of beautiful architecture. It's about the sensations that it provides.'
The frame of the structure was constructed in steel. A 12m tall, cantilevered wall emerges from the ground to the left of the pavilion at a gravity defying angle
Nouvel's design consists of a series of retractable awnings and freestanding walls
It's a fluid, open space whose glass roofs and fabric screens manipulate the light to sometimes hallucinatory effect
'I wanted to play with the diffusion of light and diffraction of the surrounding images,' says Nouvel
The pavilion will be home to Serpentine Gallery cafe and a series of evening talks
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009 by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Sanaa. Photograph by Iwan Baan
Sanaa described their structure as like 'floating aluminum, drifting freely between the trees like smoke.'
With no walls and no sense of physical restriction, Sanaa's hovering pavilion perched upon a sparse collection of wispy columns.
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2008 by Frank Gehry. Photograph by Nick Rochowski
Gehry created a twisted mesh of glass, timber and steel, supported on four massive columns
Generously proportioned stepped platforms along the sides transformed the space into an amphitheatre
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007 by Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen. Photograph by John Offenbach and Luke Hayes
The duo created a timber-clad structure, reminiscent of a giant spinning top
They experimented with vertical dimensions, abandoning the single-level structures of past pavilions
Inside the Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen's pavilion
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006 by Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond. Photography by John Offenbach
The centrepiece of the design was an ovoid-shaped inflatable canopy that floated above the gallery’s lawn. The walled enclosure below the canopy functioned both as a café and forum for televised and recorded public programmes, including live talks and film screenings.
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2005 by Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura with Cecil Balmond. Photograph by Richard Bryant
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2003 by Oscar Niemeyer. Photography by Richard Bryant
Built in steel, aluminium, concrete and glass, its ruby-red ramp contrasted with the surprise of a partly submerged auditorium, affording views across the park.
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2002 by Toyo Ito. Photography by Stephen White
The numerous triangles and trapezoids formed by this system of intersecting lines were clad to be either transparent or translucent, giving a sense of infinitely repeated motion.
The form of the box was created by an apparently random jumble of straight lines created by feeding algorithms into a computer.
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2001 by Daniel Libeskind. Photography by Hélène Binet
Named 'Eighteen Turns', the structure was created from sheer metallic planes assembled in a dynamic sequence.
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2000 by Zaha Hadid. Photography by Dafydd Jones
Taking its form from a triangulated roof structure, spanning an impressive internal space of 600sq metres, Zaha Hadid's pavilion was built primarily from steel
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