Architect Minsuk Cho Unveils Serpentine Pavilion 2024

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The 23rd Serpentine Pavilion, titled Archipelagic Void, opens to the public on 7 June. It’s a zen space that tries to do a lot.

‘The pavilion was built around its organic relationship with the enchanting nature of the surrounding nature of Hyde Park in mind,’ explained its creator, Minsuk Cho, founder of architecture firm Mass Studies.

The structure consists of five ‘islands’ arranged in a star formation around a central open space inspired by madang, the small courtyards found in old Korean houses.

The pavilion’s vestibule, called the Gallery, hosts a six-channel sound installation by musician and composer Jang Young-Gyu, who added sounds recorded in Kensington Gardens to traditional Korean vocal music and instruments. The sound installation will change with the seasons, starting with The Willow is <버들은> in Summer and progressing to Moonlight <월정명> in Autumn.

Continuing clockwise, we come to the west-facing Auditorium, the largest of five spaces designed for public gatherings and performances.

Located to the north is The Library of Unread Books, an artwork by Heman Chong (suggested by Obrist) and archivist Renée Staal being shown in the United Kingdom for the first time. The library, which allows people to read books on site but not take them home, is comprised of donated unread books.

Its inclusion aims to provide Londoners with a ‘quiet corner to read,’ explained Cho, ‘a space where one can feel at home and different people are brought together.’

‘I donated two books—Violence by Slavoj Žižek and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner,’ Cho said. He hasn’t read The Kite Runner, but he admitted ‘I’ve watched the movie though, so I hope it counts!’

His decision to include a small library in the Pavilion was informed by an initiative of ‘forest libraries’ back home in Seoul.

‘While Seoul is digitally forward, many residents are prone to digital fatigue,’ explained Cho.

In response, the city’s district office initiated a project ‘Creating Libraries with Connections to Daily Life’ and opened a forest library in Samcheong Park.

‘This innovation was an antidote to the fatigue. It became praised and went viral,’ Cho said.

The Play Tower, in the southeast, is fitted with traffic cone-orange nets ‘to provide a playful space, an intergenerational experience’, and the point to the east hosts Tea House, a nod to the Serpentine’s origins in 1934, decades before it became an art gallery in 1970.

Inaugurated by Zaha Hadid in 2000, the Serpentine Pavilion has been designed by some of the biggest names in architecture, including Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh (2023), American artist Theaster Gates (2022), and South African architect Sumayya Vally (2021). —[O]

Main image: Serpentine Pavilion 2024, Archipelagic Void, designed by Minsuk Cho, Mass Studies. © Mass Studies. Courtesy Serpentine. Photo: Iwan Baan.