British architect Peter Cook has unveiled his design for a playful children’s pavilion decorated in Lego bricks, which is set to be built next to the Serpentine gallery in London.
Named Play Pavilion, Cook created the colourful geodesic design for the Serpentine gallery and Danish toymaker The Lego Group.
Cook’s orange pavilion is set to open on 11 June to coincide with World Play Day and will be accompanied in the summer months by the adjacent annual Serpentine Pavilion, which this year is being designed by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum.
Topped with a geodesic dome roof, Play Pavilion will have rounded walls decorated in Lego murals and punctuated with differently shaped openings.
Intending to create a space for playful exploration, it will feature crawling holes, a slide and a small performance space.
“The Play Pavilion tantalises by being bright, curvaceous and strange, and on closer inspection, the acrylic skin of the enclosure erupts into delightful and inventive murals that burst out into Lego brick-built elements,” Cook told Dezeen.
“Entering the Play Pavilion, mysterious stalagmite-like masts reveal the intricacy and creative potential of the space,” he continued. “Then you see walls with long runs of Lego baseplates, with visitors invited to play and create.”
Cook aimed to create a sense of mystery and discovery with the pavilion design by partly concealing the activities within.
“The Play Pavilion is an opportunity to remind the public that architecture can be cheerful as well as focused, with a degree of mystery on first sight,” said Cook.
“We can see glimpses of people moving around inside, with children appearing from mystery places,” he continued. “Then, on entering, all is revealed.”
“Cheerful architecture takes you beyond the day-to-day predictability of cause-and-effect. Just as in the tradition of pantomime, it sends you away with a smile on your face.”
The Play Pavilion will have a steel frame with bolt-on panels, and its geodesic dome will be wrapped in an ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) skin.
Its structure will be designed to be easily dismounted so it can potentially be reconstructed elsewhere when its Serpentine residency comes to an end on 10 August.
Cook is best known for co-founding avant-garde architecture group Archigram in the 1960s alongside Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb.
He is one of the architects behind the controversial The Line megacity in Saudi Arabia, which began construction earlier this year.
The images are courtesy of the Serpentine.
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