Architect Sou Fujimoto discussed his visionary design for the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013, a delicate, cloud-like structure that experiments with immateriality and weightlessness.
Widely acknowledged as one of the most important architects coming to prominence worldwide, Sou Fujimoto (b. 1971) is the leading light of an exciting generation of artists who are reinventing our relationship with the built environment. Inspired by organic structures, such as the forest, the nest and the cave, Fujimoto’s signature buildings inhabit a space between nature and artificiality.
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.’
In this talk – the first of a series of public events taking place in the 2013 Pavilion – Sou Fujimoto spoke about his practice and the concepts driving his designs.