The gallery located in Kensington Gardens for the 14th time has ordered a summer pavilion from an architect who has not yet built anything in England, which will be traditionally sold at auction in the fall. Until now, the largest of the architectural "stars" - Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry and so on - have been invited to participate, but last year the trend has changed: the 2013 pavilion was erected by the less famous and relatively young Japanese So Fujimoto. This time, the organizers made an unexpected and therefore very interesting choice: another participant is the 48-year-old Chilean architect Smilian Radic, known for his interest in organic forms and daring experiments.
Its pavilion is a rounded volume of translucent white fiberglass resting on four boulders, slightly raised on the ground. Inside, like the previous buildings, there will be a cafe, where in the evenings round tables, lectures, concerts and similar cultural events will be held. In the dark, the pavilion glowing from the inside will resemble a huge lamp.
Radic draws its lineage from the tradition of "fancy" park pavilions that emerged in Britain at the end of the 16th century and spread from there throughout Europe. At the same time, he focuses on the image of a temporary primitive structure such as roadside stalls for the sale of fruits and vegetables, circus tent tents or houses in the slums. He is also interested - in contrast to his colleagues, who, in his opinion, are too busy with the surface of the structure and its visual image - the ability of architecture to create an environment, to give air special properties, to control noise, light, temperature, etc.
