When it became known about his appointment last fall, skeptics doubted the choice of curators: Zumthor is known for the unhurried pace of work and the impression of monumentality and timelessness inherent in most of his works. The series of pavilions in Kensington Gardens (Zumthor is the 11th participant in this program) are something like toys for the London public. When the summer season ends, the next pavilion is dismantled and sold at auction to one or another lover of modern architecture: also a fate that does not go well with eternity.
The finished project partly reassured, partly made me wonder. The structure will be a rectangular (?) Block with numerous doors and passages, in the center of which will be the hortus conclusus, a walled garden: Zumthor admits that he drew on the experience of the Middle Ages. According to him, visitors will be able to settle down along the perimeter of this "cloister" and think, detaching themselves from the bustle of the big city. The key task of creating the garden itself was entrusted to the outstanding Dutch landscape architect Pete Audolf, winner of the last Venice Biennale.
The walls of the pavilion will be a light wooden frame covered with canvas covered with black paste mixed with sand. The structure will become a buffer zone and a neutral background for the garden inside, which will also become a “garden within a garden”: after all, the pavilion will be built on the lawn of the park.
On the one hand, Zumthor's idea is very attractive, on the other, how feasible is it? The pavilions of the Serpentine Gallery set records for attendance among such cultural projects, and it is difficult to expect that the hortus conclusus will not be packed with people from morning to evening. And if you let visitors take turns, after a long wait in the sun it will be difficult for them to tune in to a meditative mood. But we will receive answers to all questions very soon: the pavilion will open in July.
