Contemporary European Architecture: Peter Zumthor's Serpentine Pavilion

3/13/13

Peter Zumthor's Serpentine Pavilion

Zumthor's 2011 Pavilion

The Serpentine Pavilion of 2011 was designed by the very famous Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. Peter Zumthor has long been one of my favorite architects, after I did a case study on his building Therme Vals in Switzerland, and discovered how he designs his works. Upon seeing the 2011 pavilion it is easy to tell that it was designed by Zumthor, because in my opinion, he has a very distinct style. Like Therme Vals, the 2011 pavilion is a minimalist structure, yet it has a very high level of sophistication within its design. He designs his buildings to feel like a cave, like they have been excavated from the top down, rather than built from the ground up. I think that his pavilion is quite successful in creating this feeling.

The hallway around the open center is completely dark, except for a few voids that allow in dashes of light, giving the interior spaces the feeling of being inside a cave. There is not one main entrance to get inside of the pavilion, but several entrances on each side creating a sense of equality between all of the facades of the building. Zumthor’s building looks like an entirely concrete structure but is actually made mostly of wood. It displays very simple facades, putting the focus not on the building but on what is inside, which is a beautiful and specially designed garden for the pavilion.

Light and Dark

One of my favorite things about this building is the complete different experience a visitor will get as they move through the building. The exterior of the building is plain, but the entrances draw the visitor in to the first layer of the building where they will feel enclosed and I imagine almost a little bit uneasy. But then they reach the very interior of the building where they find a garden that is open to the sky, and a completely different space/experience from the rest of the building. In all of Zumthor’s buildings, he focuses on the sensorial and spiritual aspects of architecture, trying to make the visitors feel connected with the spaces they are in. I think that this pavilion is very successful in this way.

For my drawings and cutting I wanted to try to emulate this feeling of going from a very enclosed space to a very open one, and the differences between these two kinds of spaces. I found through my analysis that the building almost creates a journey to the center of itself. Zumthor used light, shadow, and scale to make a person feel the difference in the two main spaces of the building.