Spatial Laboratories and the Serpentine Pavilion

The level of respect (or disregard) with which we treat the temporary is of constant amazement to me, and specifically when applied to architecture. In the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson and Swedish architect Kjetil Thorsen's Serpentine Gallery pavilion 2007, the marriage of artistic vision and spatial questions neither denies or enforces the temporary, but rather treats the "here" with a resounding "now."

Timberclad and spiraling, the pavilion is as dynamic as the effort one makes to observe the range of views and details that reveal themselves on the walk up the external ramp. As pictured above, if one looks up the ramp, they observe the torsion of white rope, carefully twisted to form two triangles. However, when one looks back down the ramp, the angle with which the rope turns and pinches disappears, and one feels as if they are immersed in a fragile curtain of uninterrupted fabric.

I have admired Eliasson's work since I saw him lecture at the Hirshhorn during my time as an art student in D.C. As he commented with humor and a touch of nervous insight about his recent "Weather Project" at the Tate Modern as well as his interest in "spatial research," I was excited to have found an artist that had a similar interest in the relationship between art and architecture.

My interest in Eliasson was renewed after a semester taught by Professor Aaron Sprecher. As our studio was most often referred to as a "laboratory" with which hypothesis were formulated and tested, I was not surprised to draw a correlation between Sprecher's approach to architectural processes and Olafur. Eliasson's firm, "Studio Olafur Eliasson," is specifically described as a "laboratory for spatial research."

With the luxury of building full-scale mock-ups in preparation for elaborate installations, Eliasson is a figure that continues to blur the boundary between artist, architect, and scientist. In the "Weather Project," natural phenomenon is exploited to elicit temporary but drastic changes in human behavior and awareness. The Serpentine Gallery allows the human to become a reoccuring scale factor for the viewer, while becoming a self-reflexive point of reference as his/her vertical and horizontal orientation continually shifts.

In conclusion, the temporary nature of the Serpentine Gallery is an effective way to deploy architecture that can quickly and creatively propose ideas without commiting itself to a monumental scale and presence. Olafur and Thorsen achieve this in their economic use of materials, decisive form, and sheer playfulness.