Theaster Gates’ hotly-anticipated debut as the first non-architect to win the Serpentine Pavilion commission has been causing quite a buzz online since premiering for the press yesterday in London’s historic Kensington Gardens.
The installation has thus far been received domestically as a mostly disappointing premiere, garnering two-star reviews in both The Times and Evening Standard, which labeled the effort “simple to the point of simplistic.”
“The vertical spruce planks ringing the exterior feel more like a garden fence than a dado, for instance,” critic Robert Bevan described. “But the strangest decision has been to insert a full-height vertical plank partition, which divides the main space, rendering the circular volume unreadable.”
Architects’ Journal editor Rob Wilson picked out the limitations of the design, stating that, in his view, “it feels like the need to simplify construction and minimise the carbon footprint of the building appears to have rather clipped the wings of Gates’ deep engagement with the properties of materials in his practice.”
“If judged in terms of Gates’ concept of a vessel, this year’s pavilion undoubtedly has a directness and physical power to it as a volume, with the blackness of its interior surfaces lending it an unexpected cocoon-like warmth,” he wrote. “But as architecture, it’s not complex or subtle in the forms or spaces it makes — seemingly reflective of how increasingly this annual architecture commission appears to elicit structures designed more to act as empty staging for events rather than being the main event in themselves.”
Writing in The Guardian, Oliver Wainwright said the pavilion “feels like a funerary chapel built inside a converted gasometer” marked by a “refreshingly workmanlike simplicity.”
“It feels like something has been lost in translation,” he lamented. “There is little of the rough, tough, ad hoc spirit of Gates’s usual work, such as the community buildings he has reimagined on the South Side of Chicago, or the Sanctum space he co-designed in Bristol in 2015, made from recycled materials gathered from sites of labour and religious practice. Gates knows better than most that materials embody meaning, but the precisely cut, freshly processed timber on display here speaks more of Goldman Sachs sponsorship and the pavilion’s acquisition by an Austrian spa operator than the kind of community-focused, locally-rooted practice he made his name with. It’s all a bit too slick. Gates said he tried to use reclaimed or surplus materials for the pavilion but struggled to find enough components of the right dimensions.”
Also in the UK, The Times’ Laura Freeman was quick to derision, quipping, “What a dull drum of a summer pavilion this is,” she wrote. “The Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates has designed an ostensibly beautiful building that wholly misses the brief. The Black Chapel would make a moving mausoleum or a suitably sombre memorial, but as a summerhouse, it is dark and enclosing, turning its back on the park. And today was sunny. It’ll be sepulchral in the rain.”
In an interview with the New York Times’ Farah Nayeri, Gates explained his logic fairly simply: “I know how people vibe in a space. I know when I’m in the presence of a space that makes me feel awe and makes me want to settle in. So I was thinking more about the psychological implications of space.”
“I wanted to create a sacred space. What I didn’t imagine three years ago was that I would also have to be dealing with the mourning, with the passing of my dad. The piece now has another resonance, in another register: the register of memorial.”
“My dad gave me my hands, so in a way I don’t feel sad today,” Gates added also of one of the structure’s main sources of inspiration, who he recently lost. “I feel like the inheritance that he gave me was my desire to work and labor.”
In our own comments section, Will Galloway noted that the Serpentine’s 21st edition “demands a lot more of the viewer than previous pavilions,” predicting boldly that “It will change the public events quite a bit — all the previous projects could be ignored when it came to thinking big thoughts and so on. They were all innocuous. Cool, powerful as formal things, but even with all the flash and pomp still only just touching on anything serious or provoking.”
The lone positive review thus far appears to be from The Telegraph’s Chris Foges, who gave the pavilion four out of a possible five stars, commenting that he found its interior to be “a space of surprising atmospheric power.”
“Humble materials are elevated by constructional details that have the pragmatic beauty of barns or industrial buildings. Slender ribs radiate outward from the roof opening like spokes of a wheel, and suggest a sophistication that isn’t evident from the outside. Columns that form a ring around the perimeter are quietly clever too: they are made from timber trusses — the sort that normally makes floors — turned on end. Bench seats in between make an inviting place to sit and take it all in.”
Want to add your own take on this year’s Serpentine Pavilion? Share your critique of the structure to the comments section below to keep the conversation going.
I am reminded of the three blind men trying to describe an elephant.
It would be an interesting study to flesh out the assumptions behind the criticisms and try to get some coherent, meaningful picture. Extend it out to all architectural discussion today.
“But the strangest decision has been to insert a full-height vertical plank partition, which divides the main space, rendering the circular volume unreadable.”
The planks must fill a structural need for a monolithic cylinder that, in fact, is thin and fragile. Also they break an expectation. They provide a note of structure and repetitive division, fragile itself but strong enough, needed for the overall expression.
But obviously it goes against those assumptions, which may be its main strength. This is a simple, direct statement, which is refreshing. It impresses as much with what it is not as what it is. Most, think about its purpose and theme, its program.
I feel like this is the kind of project you have to visit in order to assess properly.
I would like to see it in person, but some of the critics points ring true to me when looking at the photos - particularly Wainwright's observation about the materials and their connection to Gates' other work, and Bevan's criticism of the straight partition wall, which does neuter the space.
Otherwise most of these critics sound like a buncha garden-party attending bourgeoise who don't want to think about (let alone confront!) the issues that Gates is trying to foreground.
the soundbites sound like architecture critics trying to talk about art. The actual article by wainwright is at least a bit more nuanced (haven't read all the others). He makes a lot of good points about how the entire project has strange commercial constraints that need to be overcome - and in his opinion this project doesn't make it. I've been to a good handful of these serpentine projects and usually they are amazing and they slightly disappoint at the same time - simply because they hint at a lot more, but can never deliver on that promise. It seems to be a side effect of the entire concept. So I get his complaint though I am not sure it is altogether fair. These pavilions are also in the end very simple things, a space for a coffee shop and gatherings of a specific type, which do not always help when trying to be serious - It is hard to avoid the entire "exit through the giftshop" vibe that the program embodies. The park setting is wonderful, however the pavilion sits neatly between a relatively busy road and the Serpentine book store (I am sure it has a different name) so the artwork/architecture-work has to sit in a kind of surreal place. That so many architects are able to deal with all that (Sou Fujimoto and Selgas Cano were astonishingly good) is perhaps because architects are trained to deal with such things - making objects into places is a very specific kind of trick, and most artists spend their careers doing the exact opposite. Which is why this move by serpentine was so risky and exciting. Not having been, and looking only at photos, I get all the gripes and swipes, but I think there is enough of the basic idea to praise - and frankly we should be talking about a lot of other things that this project is doing than worrying overly much about its execution as architecture (or that it has already been sold to a spa for its next incarnation, how hedonistic and ironic). Hopefully the events that go on inside will bring some of that intention back...and hopefully serpentine will continue to look beyond architects to design the pavilions.
I don’t get it.
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