The Ito-Balmond Serpentine Pavilion is a structure designed by

Cecil Balmond Cecil Balmond OBE is a Sri Lankan–British designer, artist, and writer. In 1968 Balmond joined Ove Arup & Partners, leading him to become deputy chairman. In 2000 he founded design and research group, the AGU (Advanced Geometry Unit). He cu ...

and

Toyo Ito is a Japanese architect known for creating conceptual architecture, in which he seeks to simultaneously express the physical and virtual worlds. He is a leading exponent of architecture that addresses the contemporary notion of a "simulated" ...

and originally built for the

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

Pavilion programme in London's

Kensington Gardens Kensington Gardens, once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, are among the Royal Parks of London. The gardens are shared by the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and sit immediately to the west of Hyde P ...

Hyde Park Hyde Park may refer to: Places England * Hyde Park, London, a Royal Park in Central London * Hyde Park, Leeds, an inner-city area of north-west Leeds * Hyde Park, Sheffield, district of Sheffield * Hyde Park, in Hyde, Greater Manchester Austra ...

, in 2002 and now part of a restaurant in southern

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. It focuses on modern and contemporary art. Each year the Serpentine Gallery builds a temporary structure for the summer in its grounds, and projects are led by director

Julia Peyton-Jones Dame Julia Peyton-Jones (born 18 February 1952) is a British curator and gallery director, currently Senior Global Director at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in London, Paris and Salzburg. She formerly worked as Co-Director of the Serpentine Gallery in ...

. The Ito-Balmond Serpentine Pavilion has been hailed as one of the most successful temporary pavilions to date.

Jonathan Glancey Jonathan Glancey, is an architectural critic and writer who was the architecture and design editor at ''The Guardian'', a position he held from 1997 to February 2012. He previously held the same post at ''The Independent''. He also has been invo ...

, architecture critic for the UK's ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', called it "one of the most exquisite and revolutionary buildings of recent times." The design is based on an

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...

designed by Balmond. "Although fun to look at, this structure was rooted in complex geometry…the pavilion had no façade and no hidden structural frame behind it… what you saw was 100% pure structure, its holistic beauty like that of a crystal or a snowflake." Balmond was awarded the Gengo Matsui Prize for the pavilion, one of the highest awards for engineering given in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The pavilion now serves as the beach club restaurant of a luxury hotel in Le Beauvallon, across the bay from

Saint-Tropez , INSEE = 83119 , postal code = 83990 , image coat of arms = Blason ville fr Saint-Tropez-A (Var).svg , image flag=Flag of Saint-Tropez.svg Saint-Tropez (; oc, Sant Tropetz, ; ) is a commune in the Var department and the region of Provence-Al ...

in southern France. Ito and Balmond have since collaborated on the

Taichung Taichung (, Wade–Giles: ''Tʻai²-chung¹'', pinyin: ''Táizhōng''), officially Taichung City, is a special municipality located in central Taiwan. Taichung has approximately 2.8 million residents and is the second most populous city of Taiw ...

Opera House in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

References

External links

Serpentine GalleryArchitecture Photography
{{coord , 43, 17, 19, N, 6, 36, 20, E, type:landmark_region:FR, display=title Restaurants in France