Serpentine Variety Performance
Over the past five years, the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions have given us the opportunity to realise a series of architecturally experimental designs, drawing on our materials skills, in-house facilities and love of innovation in new and exciting ways.
This on-going programme of temporary structures presents work by a different leading international architect or design team each year. The result is a back-catalogue of pavilions that embody innovation, experimentation and diversity that is unique worldwide and which has become one of the most anticipated events in the global design calendar.
The immediacy of the process – a maximum of six months from invitation to completion – plays to our strengths in creative manufacturing and delivering to tight deadlines. From a manufacturing and construction perspective, each pavilion has presented us with a polar opposite of the previous year, resulting in a working palette of materials that include composite panels, steel, wood and cork. Even with the tight timeline, research and experimentation often play a key role.
The 2009 reflective, Matisse-like structure of the SAANA designed pavilion drew heavily on our experience in developing and manufacturing composite sandwich panels.