Frida Escobedo is already the eighteenth participant in the London Serpentine Gallery program, and also the youngest of them: she is 39 years old. Since 2000, the gallery, located in Kensington Gardens, has been inviting an architect, who has not yet built anything in England, to build a pavilion next to its main building - a cafe during the day and a space for concerts and discussions in the evening. In the fall, the building is sold at a charity auction. The first participant was Zaha Hadid, followed by Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel … In recent years, pavilions are more often created by architects not from Europe and the United States, and also not so deserved than at the beginning. Their candidacies are chosen by the gallery manager Jana Peel and its art director Hans-Ulrich Obrist with the help of David Adjaye and Richard Rogers.
Frida Escobedo combined the features of the Mexican and English building culture in her construction. The openwork walls and patio-type plan are a nod to Latin American traditions, while the selected material, concrete roof tiles, and the meridian axis, a reminder of neighboring Greenwich, are reminiscent of England. When looking through the walls, the surrounding park turns into an abstraction of green and blue spots, and the mirrored ceiling panels in combination with a 5 mm deep pond create a play of optical images.
The author explains that she has embodied the topic of interest to her in the project - the reflection of time in architecture with the help of simple materials and forms; due to its openness to the outside, the pavilion, more precisely, its appearance changes depending on the time of day, that is, being inside you can follow the passage of time, it serves as a kind of "clock".
The pavilion will remain in Kensington Gardens until October 7, 2018.
