Long wooden ribs fan out from the centre of the roof of this year’s Serpentine pavilion, like the gills of a gigantic portobello mushroom. Beneath the low-slung canopy, reddish oak tables and stools are arranged in a momentous circle, as if awaiting an important meeting, like a council chamber ready to host some great fungal assembly.
“We wanted to be in harmony with the park,” says Lina Ghotmeh, the French-Lebanese architect of this year’s pavilion in Kensington Gardens, London. “I began by looking at the circles made by the canopies of the trees, and set the structure back to avoid their roots, making it the least invasive on the living surroundings as possible.”
