SANAA: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009

by Mark Wigley, Julia Peyton-Jones (Foreword by), Mark Wigley

An ongoing program of temporary structures designed by internationally acclaimed architects, The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commission was conceived by the institution's director, Julia Peyton-Jones, in 2000, and is unique worldwide. The Pavilion for 2009 was designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, of the leading Japanese architecture practice SANAA. Sejima and Nishizawa created a stunning structure that resembles a reflective cloud or a pool of water, sitting atop a series of delicate columns. The metal roof varies in height, wrapping itself around the trees in the park and sweeping down almost to the ground in some places. Open and ephemeral in structure, its reflective materials allow it to sit seamlessly within the natural environment, reflecting both the park and sky. "It works as a field of activity with no walls," say Sejima and Nishizawa. This publication documents the conception, construction and life of this impressive temporary structure.

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2010

About the author

Mark Wigley is Professor and Dean Emeritus at Columbia GSAPP. He served as Dean from 2004 to 2014. Wigley has written extensively on the theory and practice of architecture and is the author of Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire (1998); White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (1995); and The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt (1993). He co-edited The Activist Drawing: Retracing Situationalist Architectures from Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond (2001).

In 2005 he co-founded Volume magazine with Rem Koolhaas and Ole Bouman as a collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO (Rotterdam), and C-lab (Columbia University). Wigley curated the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at The Museum of Modern Art, and others at The Drawing Center, New York; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; and Witte de With Museum, Rotterdam.

Mark Wigley was awarded the Resident Fellowship, Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism (1989), International Committee of Architectural Critics (C.I.C.A.) Triennial Award for Architectural Criticism (1990) and a Graham Foundation Gran (1997). He received both his Bachelor of Architecture (1979) and his Ph.D. (1987) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.