The Filling Station by Carmody Groarke

Just a stones throw away from my flat, behind the monstrous development of King's Cross/ St Pancras Station is a pop-up restaurant and events space named 'The Filling Station'. Last night I had the pleasure of going along for drinks at this abandoned forecourt of an old petrol station beside the canal. It has been redeveloped by architects Carmody Groarke into a futuristic, transparent and curvaceous fibreglass enclosure, illuminated by retro green lettering announcing the presence of east-end hipsters migrating from Shoreditch to the 'The Filling Station'. Inside is Shrimpy's, a critically acclaimed diner serving up dishes styled as ‘Calexican’ (a mixture of Mexican and Californian- soft shell crab burgers, sweetcorn chowder and fried chicken), while outside there are freshly made stone-baked pizzas and Margarita slushies. The temporary structure will remain in place for approximately two years before the site is redeveloped to provide housing for the rapidly changing King's Cross. 

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National Tourist Route, Havoysund by Reiulf Ramstad Architects

I know myself how appealing the landscape of Norway is. Towards the extreme north of Norway, near the Arctic Ocean, it's barren, inhospitable but wildly beautiful. This is where Oslo-based practice Reiulf Ramstad Architects has designed a winding concrete walkway to enhance the experience of walking from the roadside down to the seaside. Although a little tedious, you could just simply walk from A to B, the new addition re-focuses awareness of the visitor on the landscape and opens up the shoreline to all ages, with the addition of ramps, built-in benches and tables. 

Images: Reiulf Ramstad Architects 

Akihisa Hirata and Oak Structural Design Office: Bloomberg Pavilion

Akihisa Hirata has teamed up with Oak Structural Design Office to build the Bloomberg Pavilion, which will become a platform for ten different exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. The design is based on a mathematical concept formulated by Kazushi Ahara, who describes the shape as a 'hyplane'; a geometric system consisting of identical non-equilateral triangles. 

Images: Design Boom

Frieze Art Fair Pavilions by Carmody Groarke

Set amongst the trees in Regent's Park, and divided by a series of courtyards, these wooden pavilions were designed by British architects Carmody Groarke for last week's Frieze Art Fair. Every autumn the park plays host to Frieze Art Fair, which showcases works by more than 1000 artists, represented by contemporary art galleries across the world. The pavilions formed a new addition this year- they offered public seating as well as VIP areas adjacent to the nearby large exhibition tents. 

Images: Richard Davies and Christian Richters

Serpentine Pavilion 2011 by Peter Zumthor

Photos have recently been released for the new temporary pavilion outside the Serpentine Gallery, created and designed by architect Peter Zumthor. A previous post of mine showed some concept images back at the beginning of April. 

"At the heart of Peter Zumthor’s Pavilion is a garden that the architect hopes will inspire visitors to become observers. Zumthor’s says his design ‘aims to help its audience take the time to relax, to observe and then, perhaps, start to talk again – maybe not.’ The design emphasises the role the senses and emotions play in our experience of architecture.With a refined selection of materials Zumthor creates contemplative spaces that evoke the spiritual dimension of our physical environment. As always, Zumthor’s aesthetic goal is to customise the building precisely to its purpose as a physical body and an object of emotional experience. Zumthor has stated that ‘the concept for this year’s Pavilion is the hortus conclusus, a contemplative room, a garden within a garden. The building acts as a stage, a backdrop for the interior garden of flowers and light. Through blackness and shadow one enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden, a place abstracted from the world of noise and traffic and the smells of London – an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers. This experience will be intense and memorable, as will the materials themselves – full of memory and time."

I personally am very much looking forward to visiting the latest installation at the Serpentine, it is Zumthor's first built work in the UK and looks to be a diminutive addition to Hyde Park, enclosing a solitary interior garden space in the heart of a busy metropolis. 

Images: Dezeen

I was reading a very intriguing book the other day; Bill Bryson's 'At Home, A Short History of Private Life' and came across some historical anecdotes of the Serpentine's conception. In 1730, Queen Caroline of Anspach, the wife of King George II, ordered the diversion of the River Westbourne to make a large pond in the middle of Hyde Park. The Serpentine was the first lake in the world designed not to look like a manmade lake, moving away from the well-regarded and rigorously-used geometrical pools of the 17th Century; "Now here was an artificial body of water that was curvilinear and graceful, that meandered beguilingly and looked as if it had been formed, in a moment of careless serendipity, by nature." The result became endlessly popular with Londoners, and Queen Caroline herself even installed two large yachts, despite the fact there was barely space for them to move! Perhaps Queen Caroline would appreciate Zumthor's almost private natural retreat, as she herself made herself deeply unpopular in London when she banished the public from parks such as Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens (except on Saturdays and for a price), preferring them to be for the sole use of royalty and the respectable upper classes. I though am pleased that a piece of Zumthor's architecture is available for us to appreciate right in our very own city.  

Edge Condition Pavilion by Synecdoche

Michigan architects Synecdoche have won a design competition run by Young Architects Forum of Atlanta, which has resulted in this stacked timber pavilion in Atlanta Georgian. The two and a half ton structure, called Edge Condition Pavilion, is constructed of timber offcuts and is held to the ground with cables. It is a bit of a balancing act, with the hardwood rods being help together solely by gravity. The architects described the project as;
"Utilizing a by-product material as a means of invoking the temporary pavilion with a temporary material wood edges cut from hardwood boards give a standardized object to build upon creating a field in which to inhabit. By operating on the edge of definitive material, neither board nor wood chip, the wood edge becomes the temporal object between two phases. In the same light the pavilion offers the capacity to be an edge condition of construction. The methodical mode of stacking and maneuvering the edges is in itself on the edge of a mode of construction."

Images: Dezeen

Pavilion for an artist by DHL Architecture

This mirrored installation, created at a peculiar scale of 1:2, neither model nor building, is one of the realised winning entries for the Atelier Malkovich ideas competition to design an innovative and functional studio for a contemporary artist. The pavilion below is seen as an uninterrupted archive corridor, where the artist can roam through their orderly labyrinth, within the soft warm core of the strong, hard and reflective shell. The exterior is camouflaged with shiny mirror, creating repetitive images of the surrounding landscape. The panelled doors are almost invisible, which makes negotiating the entrance feel like you are discovering a hidden world, where only the owner knows it's secrets.

Images: ArchDaily