HdM and Ai Weiwei will design the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion this Summer

I know I'm always a bit late with the announcements here on red bulb. If you want to get more recent updates it's probably better to follow my twitter account @jbabics.

The decision was made earlier this month by the Serpentine Gallery that the Swiss Architects Herzog & de Meuron and the Chinese artist, architect, curator, publisher, poet and urbanist Ai Weiwei will have the honor to be able to design the gallery's pavilion in Kensington Gardens this summer. I was very pleased to hear that but at the same time also a bit surprised. One of the condition for an architect to be chosen to design the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion is that they have never built anything in the UK before. Herzog & de Meuron have indeed completed a quite distinct project in the UK with converting the Bankside Power Station in London into Tate Modern. However, the pavilion will be the first "collaboration" of HdM and Ai Weiwei in the UK... In 2010 they already used a trick to get Jean Nouvel build the pavilion with the reason that his new shopping center close to St Paul's Cathedral was actually not finished yet. The original idea of the pavilion was probably to give a chance to very talented new architects with potential to become start architects. Since most of the pavilion designers are now stars (e.g. Zaha Hadid, the designer of the first pavilion in 2000) the standard became very high and the building boom in London does not leave so many star architects, which have not built in UK yet.

Anyway, by no means I want to criticise the choice of Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Co-director of the Serpentine Gallery, and his team. I really look forward to seeing the result of HdM and Ai Weiwei's creative minds, which has of course also a connection to the Olympic Games in London. Herzog and de Meuron designed the "Bird's Nest", the National Stadium for the Olympics in Beijing 2008 and Ai Weiwei was integrated in the project very early as their cultural interpreter.

I am sure we will see a very unique approach of the architects to this project. Some first descriptions can be found on www.serpentinegallery.org.