Park Nights 2014: Smiljan Radić in conversation with Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist; talk by Justin McGuirk

Smiljan Radić, the architect of the 2014 Pavilion, discussed the concepts behind his design, followed by a talk by Justin McGuirk.

Radić, the architect of the 2014 Pavilion Commission, discussed the concepts behind his design. Occupying a footprint of some 350 square metres, the Pavilion depicted a semi-translucent, cylindrical structure, designed to resemble a shell, resting on large quarry stones. This conversation was followed by a talk by writer and curator Justin McGuirk, who presented research that informed his latest publication, Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture (Verso Books, June 2014), which Richard Sennett hailed as ‘provocative and beautifully crafted’.

This Park Night was part of the London Festival of Architecture.

Between June and October 2014, Serpentine Galleries presented Park Nights, an annual series of live art, poetry, music, film, literature, performance and theory. Eight events were conceived to take place on selected Friday evenings in the unique environment of the Serpentine Pavilion 2014, designed by Radić.

Justin McGuirk is a writer, critic and curator based in London. He is the director of Strelka Press, the publishing arm of the Strelka Institute in Moscow. He has been the design critic of The Guardian, the editor of Icon magazine and the design consultant to Domus. In 2012, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture for an exhibition he curated with Urban Think Tank.