In June 2023, London's Serpentine Gallery will open a new pavilion designed by Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh, offering an interactive sense of community and a greenery through the use of environmentally friendly materials.
Lina Ghotmeh is a talented architect whose buildings exude a humanist spirit and an emphasis on the interaction between man and nature, a distinct vitality that also blooms in her collaborations with the fashion industry.
The new pavilion by Lina Ghotmeh is the 22nd pavilion of the Serpentine Gallery, which was designed with the theme "à table", which means "to the table".
Commenting on this theme, Lina Ghotmeh explains: "The à table is an invitation to live together around the same table and in the same space. It encourages us to come together for a conversation and think about how we can restore and rebuild our relationship with nature and the planet. Born and raised in Beirut and now living in Paris, as a woman from the Mediterranean, I feel a deep sense of belonging to our land, its meaning and beliefs. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the Toguna hut of the Dogon people of West Africa, a place where all members of the community can come together to discuss. Here, we can eat, work, play, meet, talk, and think together. ”
It is reported that the new pavilion includes multiple functional areas such as food, leisure, entertainment, etc., and also emphasizes the social attributes of the space in an all-round way. For example, the exhibition hall adopts a circular space layout as a whole, and the arrangement of seats is also convenient for people to communicate and interact with each other.
In addition, the new pavilion also places great emphasis on sustainable nature and environmental protection concepts. Inspired by nature, the pavilion's structure echoes the vast canopy of Kensington Gardens in Hyde Park. The entire pavilion is also built with bio-sourced and low-carbon materials, and the pleated roof of the pavilion will be suspended with sustainable wood materials, which is durable and can be disassembled and reassembled to minimize environmental impact, which is also very much in line with Serpentine Gallery's sustainability policy.
The new pavilion will be officially unveiled in June at Serpentine Gallery South, and the new pavilion will continue to exhibit until October this year. The new pavilion will also serve as an important platform for the Serpentine Gallery in London's projects, presenting live concerts, poetry sessions, dance performances and gallery education.
Lina Ghotmeh is a humanistic architect. Her design adheres to the concept of "creating an environment that encourages people to live together in a broad sense", and pays close attention to the connection between architecture and people, nature and history, often taking a holistic view of the background of site selection, location type, construction materials and resources, and user habits. Her firm has developed significant projects at the intersection of architecture, art and design, with modern minimalism at its core, often with sleek geometric lines in her works.
For example, in the Estonian National Museum project, she created the roof of this museum into an infinite space through which visitors can enter the center of the museum, and this design also allows the roof to be used for various public activities, such as exhibitions, performances, salons, etc.
It is worth mentioning that Lina Ghotmeh also has close ties with the fashion industry, having designed the Maroquinerie de Louviers, a leather goods workshop in Normandy, France, for Hermès.
According to Fashion Trust Arabia, 600,000 hand-crafted bricks make up the workshop's façade, which is dotted with a series of arches that the famous architect and urban planner Philippe Trétiack mentioned in Hermès World "reminiscent of the shape of a horseshoe or the breakdown of a horse's movements when jumping obstacles." "They also bring comfortable, abundant natural light to the workshop.
Lina Ghotmeh was also involved in Hermès' window design project in Tokyo, Japan, which is set in a primitive era with a dark blue tone, with mermaid-like images looming in translucent white materials, representing the ancient and mysterious vitality of the primordial sea.
Lina Ghotmeh was also a finalist in Dior's façade design competition, inspired by Mr. Dior's Granville garden, with a resin panel façade in which a large number of dried bouquets of jasmine, lilies, tulips, roses and more solidify in a mezzanine, creating an immersive and emotionally powerful experience between light and shadow. WWD