Serpentine Pavilion 2022, Black Chapel, designed by Theaster Gates. Design render, exterior view.
(Picture: © 2022 Theaster Gates Studio)Theaster Gates can be forgiven for feeling the pressure as the first artist, rather than an architect, to lead the design of the Serpentine Gallery’s summer pavilion with his Black Chapel. “I know I am not an architect,” he concedes, “but I do know a lot about making spaces sacred and bringing people together.”
His friend, the architect Sir David Adjaye, has been on hand to help translate Gates’ original ceramic model into the Serpentine’s tallest pavilion yet at ten metres tall. A ring of steel trusses is clad in a black-stained stressed-ply skin to form the circular enclosure. Look up, and you will see an oculus, a circular opening to the sky which has antecedents back to the Pantheon in Rome (where Gates has spent time). Circular chapels and temples are an ancient tradition. He describes it as a “welcoming sacred space”.
