Each year, the Serpentine Pavilion art gallery in London selects a new architect. Last year, they South Africa-based Sumayya Vally from Counterspace. Though Covid-19 delayed the Pavilion, art aficionados can finally rejoice. The Serpentine Pavilion will open once more on June 11, 2021.
Vally founded Counterspace in 2015. Not even 30 years old, she is the youngest architect ever to design the Serpentine Pavilion. But she earned this honor through years of hard work and dedication to her craft.
Vally’s vision for the Pavilion reflects her approach to architecture as a whole. Rather than seeing it as a simple visual/spatial art, she believes that art and architecture occupies an important political and social space as well. As a result, she has designed the Pavilion to highlight and engage the community, especially minority communities.
Movable parts of the gallery will travel between disparate communities and the site itself, culminating in community gathering spaces. Another tenet of Vally’s approach: practicality. After a long year of distance and isolation, her vision for creating a space of gathering and connection feels all the more necessary.
“The pavilion is itself conceived as an event,” the Counterspace website reads. “The coming together of a variety of forms from across London over the course of the Pavilion’s sojourn.”
Read more about Vally’s vision for the Pavilion here.
Read more about Sumayya Vally herself here:
Sumayya Vally: the youngest Serpentine Pavilion architect in history
