Japanese architect Junya Ishigami has been selected to design this year's Serpentine Pavilion, which will take the form of a huge slate roof rising up out of the landscape.
The Tokyo-based architect, who leads the studio Junya Ishigami + Associates, will become the 19th designer of the prestigious annual commission, which will be installed beside the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, London, this summer.
Ishigami describes his design as being like "a hill made out of rocks". It will comprise a roof made out of natural slate, arranged to look it has emerged from the ground.
"Like a billowing piece of fabric"
Like his previous architectural projects, which include the glass-walled KAIT studio at Kanagawa Institute of Technology, the design is intended to show that nature and architecture can be in harmony with one another. "My design for the pavilion plays with our perspectives of the built environment against the backdrop of a natural landscape, emphasising a natural and organic feel as though it had grown out of the lawn, and resembling a hill made out of rocks," Ishigami explained.
The pavilion will comprise a roof made out of natural slate
"This 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," he continued.
"Possessing the weighty presence of slate roofs seen around the world, and simultaneously appearing ...