Sou Fujimoto's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion Opens June 8th, First Photos by Iwan Baan Emerge

We're very excited to publish first photos of the completed 2013 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion which is scheduled to open on June 8th (previously on Bustler).

The pavilion's designer, celebrated Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, is the thirteenth and, at 41, youngest architect to accept the invitation to design a temporary structure for London's Serpentine Gallery. Past Pavilions have included designs by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Peter Zumthor, (2011), Jean Nouvel (2010), Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA (2009), Frank Gehry (2008), the late Oscar Niemeyer (2003) and Zaha Hadid, who designed the inaugural structure in 2000.

Fujimoto will be discussing his visionary design for the Pavilion in a public talk on June 8th. In this talk - the first of a series of public events that will take place in the 2013 Pavilion over the summer - he speaks about his practice and the concepts driving his designs.

Describing his design concept, Sou Fujimoto said:

"For the 2013 Pavilion I propose an architectural landscape: a transparent terrain that encourages people to interact with and explore the site in diverse ways. Within the pastoral context of Kensington Gardens, I envisage the vivid greenery of the surrounding plant life woven together with a constructed geometry. A new form of environment will be created, where the natural and the man-made merge; not solely architectural nor solely natural, but a unique meeting of the two.

"The Pavilion will be a delicate, three-dimensional structure, each unit of which will be composed of fine steel bars. It will form a semi-transparent, irregular ring, simultaneously protecting visitors from the elements while allowing them to remain part of the landscape. The overall footprint will be 350 square-metres and the Pavilion will have two entrances. A series of stepped terraces will provide seating areas that will allow the Pavilion to be used as a flexible, multi-purpose social space.

"The delicate quality of the structure, enhanced by its semi-transparency, will create a geometric, cloud-like form, as if it were mist rising from the undulations of the park. From certain vantage points, the Pavilion will appear to merge with the classical structure of the Serpentine Gallery, with visitors suspended in space."

Fujimoto is the third Japanese architect to accept the invitation to design the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, following Toyo Ito in 2002 and Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA in 2000.