The Oare Pavilion or Oare Tea House Pavilion is a summer house designed by

I. M. Pei Ieoh Ming Pei
– website of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners ( ; ; April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was ...

for the businessman Henry Keswick and his wife

Tessa Keswick Annabel Thérèse Keswick, Lady Keswick (née Fraser; 15 October 1942 – 13 September 2022), styled "The Honourable", was a Scottish lady from the Fraser family who married Lord Reay and then Sir Henry Keswick. She was influential in Britis ...

Oare House Oare House is a Grade I listed country house in Oare, Wiltshire, England. The house was built in 1740 for a London wine merchant, Henry Deacon. It was largely remodelled in the early 1920s by the architect Clough Williams-Ellis, for Sir Geoff ...

Oare, Wiltshire Oare is a small village in the east of the county of Wiltshire, England. The village lies about north of Pewsey, on the A345 road towards Marlborough, and falls within the civil parish of Wilcot, Huish and Oare. History Oare was anciently ...

. It was completed in 2003 and is Pei's only building in the United Kingdom. The pavilion was the recipient of an award from the Georgian Society for a new building in a Georgian context. Pei was designing the

Suzhou Museum The Suzhou Museum () is a museum of ancient Chinese art, paintings, calligraphy and handmade crafts in Suzhou, Jiangsu, China. It is one of the most visited museums in the world, with 2,340,000 visitors in 2018. The Folk Branch of the museu ...

in China at the time of his commission by the Keswicks for the Oare Pavilion. Keswick's ancestors had also been acquainted with Pei's father, a banker. The Keswicks wished for an "airy garden pavilion for family activities and guests" that would provide a focal point in the landscape surrounding Oare House. Pei subsequently received the

RIBA Gold Medal The Royal Gold Medal for architecture is awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects on behalf of the British monarch, in recognition of an individual's or group's substantial contribution to international architecture. It is gi ...

from the

Royal Institute of British Architects The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally, founded for the advancement of architecture under its royal charter granted in 1837, three suppl ...

in 2010. In a 2010 profile of Pei written by Paula Deitz for the ''

Architects Journal ''Architects' Journal'' is an architectural magazine published in London by Metropolis International. History The first edition was produced in 1895. Originally named ''The Builder's Journal and Architectural Record'', from 1906 to 1910 it was k ...

'', described the Oare Pavilion in the context of its surrounding landscape as "In lieu of an 18th-century folly, the Oare Pavilion is updated 21st-century chinoiserie, a raised octagonal glass structure with a two-tiered, pagoda-style roof on a white concrete foundation...". Deitz sees the pavilion as a "sister to the performance pavilion in the lotus pond at the Suzhou Museum. And, like the museum, light filters through thin wooden slats on the interior of the slanted glass walls" and concludes that the Oare Pavilion is "...one of his best – a fulfilment of a lifetime aesthetic". The pavilion featured in the 2008 book ''Follies of Europe: Architectural Extravaganzas'' where it was described as possessing "proud confidence and advanced technical capabilities". It is visible from the

North Wessex Downs The North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is located in the English counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. The name ''North Wessex Downs'' is not a traditional one, the area covered being better kno ...

. It is also described by Julian Orbach is his revised ''Wiltshire'' in the Pevsner Buildings of England series, published in 2021. Orbach describes the "extraordinary" structure as a "

pagoda A pagoda is an Asian tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist but sometimes Taoist, ...

in glass", and notes its "elegant

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

". Photographs of the pavilion by Morley von Sternberg are in the collection of the British Architectural Library. Von Sternberg described the pavilion as "...geometrically formal, but is in fact an incredibly relaxing place to be" in a 2014 interview. The cloakrooms, kitchen, and furniture in the pavilion was designed by John Stefanidis.

References

External links

Oare Tea House Pavilion at Perry Y. ChinThe Oare Pavilion at Leslie E. Robertson Associates
{{I. M. Pei Buildings and structures in Wiltshire I. M. Pei buildings Modernist architecture in England Residential buildings completed in 2003