The Gehry Pavilion (Hyde Park)

Today we caught up with a friend of mine, Richard (an architect himself) in Hyde Park to take a closer look at this year Serpentine Gallery Pavilion.

Every year an international architect is invited by the Serpantine Gallery to design a ‘pavilion’ structure to be located on the Gallery’s lawn for three months.
This year the legendary American architect Frank Gehry was chosen.

This timber & glass clad pavilion is surprising his first built project in England and it has made a definite mark on the landscape so far.
The pavilion is formed by four massive steel columns, over clad with large timber planks, which support a complex suspended network of nine overlapping glass planes that create a dramatic, multi-dimensional space.

The glass canopies are made up of about 30 panes of varying sizes from specially made frosted reinforced glass (shipped in from Austria), which are positioned on top of the timber structure.

The Part-amphitheatre, part-promenade, is seemingly made up of random elements which form a transformative place for reflection and relaxation by day, and discussion and performance by night.

Apparently the design inspiration came from “a fascinating variety of sources including the elaborate wooden catapults designed by Leonardo da Vinci as well as the striped walls of summer beach huts.”

Frank Gehry describes it: “The Pavilion is designed as a wooden timber structure that acts as an urban street running from the park to the existing Gallery. Inside the Pavilion, glass canopies are hung from the wooden structure to protect the interior from wind and rain and provide for shade during sunny days.”

Follow the Construction:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ANuimkRfGiw&feature=related

Once we had exhausted all comments of the structure and Grigoria had heard enough about architecture, we headed back across the park to get an ice cream on the way home.