A Place to Gather Change of Hands

Lina

The 22nd Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Lina Ghotmeh, opened to the public on June 10. The annual pavilion commission, organized by the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Kensington Gardens, has hosted international projects since 2000. This year’s pavilion, which will be open through October 29, is again supported by Goldman Sachs with AECOM providing technical advisory services and David Adjaye returning as an adviser.

Titled À table, the wooden structure was designed in line with its natural surroundings and is encircled by a series of wooden stools and tables. Ghotmeh’s design was inspired by the architect’s experience growing up in Beirut and living and working in Paris, along with her long-standing focus on sustainable materials through her firm Lina Ghotmeh—Architecture. Her past projects include the Estonian National Museum, Stone Garden in Beirut, and Ateliers Hermès in Normandy, France. A series of 25 tables snake around the perimeter of the circular pavilion, complete with 57 backless stools, designed by Ghotmeh in collaboration with The Conran Shop. Ghotmeh hopes that this setting will encourage people to gather, serving as a place to “eat, work, play, meet, talk, rethink, and decide.”

The 300-square-foot pavilion rises 14.4 feet (4.4 meters) at its peak and was constructed with glulam timber columns and rafters. A central steel ring supports the structure, and the rooftop deck was installed with plywood and an applied membrane for waterproofing. The facade was built with plywood panels placed between the columns, which were stained and treated for fire resistance. Foundations were poured with precast concrete designed to be “removable and reusable.”

Ghotmeh likened the resulting form of the pavilion to toguna huts built by Dogon communities in western Mali and the canopy-esque roof to “echoing the structures of tree leaves,” emphasizing the use of low-carbon materials and formal moves that resonate with the site’s surrounding park. Ghotmeh summarized the approach: “While rooted in its place and welcoming the space of the park with its open gallery-like envelope, the Pavilion invites us into its intimate interior where light shimmers through the fretted panels enveloping its heart. Growing as an adaptable system, À table is a lightweight structure that can easily be disassembled and reassembled. It will live beyond its Serpentine site all while holding the memory of its original ground.”

The modular system was prefabricated by Stage One Creative Services in York, United Kingdom, with residual waste timber chipped for use in the manufacturer’s biomass energy facility. AECOM said that the larger design team also performed an audit to ensure that the timber was sustainably sourced and that all products in the building’s construction were sourced from sustainable supply chains. The straightforward bolt-and-screw assemblies will allow for the structure to be easily dismantled and reused.

Bettina Korek, chief executive of Serpentine Galleries, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of Serpentine Galleries, said: “We are honored to unveil Lina Ghotmeh’s first structure in the U.K. À table continues Serpentine’s mission of building new connections between artists, architects, and society. Drawing on natural elements that reflect its local surroundings, Ghotmeh’s design promotes unity and conviviality in its form and function.”

Chris Walton

Designed in 1966 by architect Marcel Breuer as a storage location for the Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue—the boxy Brutalist structure situated near Manhattan’s Museum Mile—has quite the provenance. Tenancy of the Breuer Building has changed hands a number of times in recent years, including with the announcement on June 1 that global auction house Sotheby’s would purchase the building.

Breuer won the commission to design the building, beating out more established architects of the time including Philip Johnson, Louis Kahn, and I. M. Pei. His design is often likened to an inverted ziggurat, featuring several cantilevers and a notable lack of windows. The Whitney Museum used the building until 2014, when it moved downtown to a new (also boxy) building designed by Renzo Piano.

Upon the Whitney’s departure from the Breuer Building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art signed on to take over the lease and launched a renovation led by Beyer Blinder Belle. In its short tenure on Madison Avenue, the Met Breuer housed the museum’s contemporary art collection. It closed down in June 2020, with plans in the works to hand the lease over to another Upper East Side art institution, the Frick.

In 2021 the Frick occupied the building, using the exhibition space as a temporary location for its collection while its building on Fifth Avenue, between 70th and 71st, undergoes a renovation