The Serpentine Galleries have opened Junya Ishigami’s Serpentine Pavilion 2019 – a canopy of Cumbrian slate that appears to emerge from the lawn in Kensington Gardens.

Photography © Norbert Tukaj

The slate tiles have been arranged to create a water-resisting surface with a varying texture. They sit atop an orthogonal mesh of steel, which spans between a ‘forest’ of 106 pin-ended columns arranged on a random grid.

Photography © Norbert Tukaj

At its maximum height, the canopy sits 4.6 metres above ground level. Ishigami imagined the space beneath the canopy as a cave-like refuge space for contemplation.

Photography © Iwan Baan

Says Ishigami, “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, resembling a hill made out of rocks.”

Photography © Norbert Tukaj

He adds: “A stone creates a landscape, and a landscape usually sits outside of a building. I wanted to create the landscape inside the building, as a theory of the landscape that the stone creates outside. In that sense, I tried to create this landscape that exists outside, inside the building itself.”

Photography © Iwan Baan

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“I wanted to create the landscape inside the building, as a theory of the landscape that the stone creates outside.”

– Junya Ishigami

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The Serpentine Pavilion 2019, designed by Junya Ishigami for Serpentine Gallery, London, will close on 6 October 2019.