Imagine a park pavilion and chances are that something circular comes to mind. From the Temple of Vesta in Rome’s Forum, to countless picturesque follies in 18th century English estates, it is the circular that often graces the landscape. This is not conceptual laziness but architectural logic: a circle can act as the fixed hub to the surrounding 360-degree context – especially one as varied as trees in a park.
Up to a third of the Serpentine Pavilions set up each summer have been roughly or precisely circular. This year’s 22nd pavilion, designed by French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh, continues that ploy in ply and laminated timber. A neatly pleated roof fans out above a circle of screens that form an enclosure, screens fretted with a pattern of fern-like cut-outs. The roof overhangs to create a loggia around its perimeter – in classic folly tradition. The scalloped edges of its footprint curve back from nearby tree canopies, anchoring it in its glade next to the Serpentine South Building.
Ghotmeh’s beautifully finished gazebo is one of the most complete and proficiently pleasurable pavilions to date and feels permanent rather than temporary in its confidence. It is called À table – the French invitation to come dine with me, to chew the fat literally and metaphorically. But my word, it’s a bland dish.
We are promised a round table inside; a round table always being the most sociable as Dorothy Parker knew well. But this is actually a ring of tables and stools, and although very finely produced in stained oak in conjunction with the Conran Shop, the results tend towards UN plenary session rather than convivial meal. Ghotmeh has gone further and produced a Mediterranean menu with Benugo, that dreary but ubiquitous caterer to London museumland. Isn’t this all starting to get a bit lifestyle?
Paris-based, Ghotmeh has not yet built extensively, and not in the UK at all, but what she has done elsewhere intrigues. These include the Estonian National Museum and two French projects that also sit pavilion-like in their landscapes. There is a leather workshop for Hermès with a series of stretch brick arches that Ghotmeh likens to galloping horses and the emerging National Choreographic Center in the Loire.
Ghotmeh describes her working method as an ‘Archaeology of the Future’, finding her inspiration by first unearthing the history of a place, examining traces, context and how it is used. However, this method constitutes (or should) the bread and butter of any decent building project rather than counting as a revelation. She does go further though by “listening to the voices of my ancestors.”
For the Serpentine, she references the toguna meeting huts of Mali’s Dogon people that are designed to keep debate civil. Toguna are so low-ceilinged that you are literally kept seated rather than being able to stand up and rant. Over three metres tall at its eaves, Ghotmeh’s Serpentine Pavilion is intimate, but has nothing of Mali about it. What her folded forms do recall are Patrick Gwynne’s 1960s pavilions for the Royal Parks, a local archaeology she does not reference.
Ghotmeh would get five stars if well-mannered and fully realised architecture was the sole measure of pavilion success. But its beige credibility comes at the cost of experimentality. Wasn’t this programme supposed to be about design innovation, giving us glimpses of what the architectural could do? On that criteria, zero stars might be more fitting.
If you want truly thrilling structures, head inside to the gallery adjacent where Argentinian artist-architect Tomás Saraceno has fiddled with the heating and lighting to encourage other species to dwell there as part of his Web(s) of Life show. The illuminated spiders’ webs displayed here are more beautiful and exciting than many recent summer pavilions. The commission has become stale. It needs a re-think.
