Junya Ishigami's Serpentine Pavilion nears completion
Our crew have been on site at the Serpentine Gallery since early April and are now nearing completion of Junya Ishigami’s 2019 pavilion. This year, they’ve been working closely with a team of specialist stone masons, helping create Ishigami’s gently sloping, rough slate canopy that appears to rise up out of the park landscape.
This will be our eleventh year manufacturing and constructing the Serpentine Pavilion. The commission is a showcase for contemporary architecture and for the last two decades has delivered a series of unique structures using a hugely diverse palette of materials, from timber, to stone, to steel, to polycarbonate, to ETFE to composites.
Each year we work closely with the Gallery, architect and structural engineers to realise the design; manufacturing then installing the structure on the lawn outside the gallery.
Each pavilion has posed particular challenges and this year’s is no different. Every single slate was worked by hand to achieve the desired rough appearance, the entire ‘levitating’ canopy being supported by a complex structure of welded cruciforms and mesh, in turn supported by 106 slender steel legs.
The pavilion opens to the public on 21st June.
Find out more on the Serpentine Gallery website.