London – “A stone created a landscape, and a landscape usually sits outside of a building. I wanted to create the landscape inside the building” says Japanese architect Junya Ishigami who has completed the Serpentine Pavilion 2019. Stone slates create a hill made of rocks creating a cave-like space and a peaceful refuge for contemplation.

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Finding shelter, thus building a roof, is the primary need that pushed humanity to create architecture in the first place. Still, today we must need to reconnect with Nature. To find a new balance. Ishigami’s Serpentine Pavilion tunes with the architect’s values and research which constantly seeks harmony between man-made and Nature-made.

Rising like a hill made of rocks, the pavilion “is an attempt to supplement traditional architecture with modern methodologies and concepts, to create in this place an expanse of scenery like never seen before.” Explains the Tokyo-based architect, founder of Junya Ishigami + Associates.

“Possessing the weighty presence of slate roofs seen around the world, and simultaneously appearing so light it could blow away in the breeze, the cluster of scattered rock levitates, like a billowing piece of fabric.”

“The interior of the Pavilion is an enclosed cave-like space, a refuge for contemplation. For me, the Pavilion articulates a ‘free space’ philosophy that is to harmony between man-made structures and those that already exist in nature.”

The Pavilion and its accompanying programme of talks and events are central to the Serpentine’s General Ecology strand – an ongoing investigation into complex systems, interspecies landscape and the environment.

Alongside this year’s Pavilion, we are thrilled to simultaneously launch Serpentine Augmented Architecture in collaboration with Google Arts & Cuture, where the winning submission by Jakob Kudsk Steensen will be on display from July 11.

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All photos: courtesy of the Serpentine Gallery.