branca lina urta

Photo impressions of the Serpentine gallery’s pavilion, designed by Jean Nouvel and built in London’s Kensington garden for the summer season of 2010.

“I was inspired by that moment,” says Jean Nouvel, “when the summer sun catches you full in the eyes and, as you blink, the world dissolves into red. In one way, the pavilion is a sun machine, a way of directing sunlight. In another, it is a fragile flower that rises in the park in the summer sun, wilts in the autumn and then vanishes. Of course, red is also the colour of London in some ways – the buses, the pillar boxes, the soldiers for the Queen – but mostly red is about the sun. I want it to catch and filter emotions, to be a little place of warmth and delight. For an architect, it’s always a pleasure to work with a programme that has no great consequences – the pavilion comes, the pavilion goes. It leaves an impression, echoes of emotion, nothing more. In this way, the architect is free to be the artist. It’s a building from a dream that allows us to have some little, I hope happy, sensations. It’s architecture on holiday.”

©2010brancolina