Playful Ping Pong Pavilion 23rd June - 8th July LFA

Dan Sweeting from Unit B and Gang of Six won a competition for the design of a playful pavilion which forms part of the London Festival of Architecture from 23rd June to 6th July, The RIBA's Love Architecture Festival, and the Oxford School of Architecture end of year show. The pavilion is based on the Ping Pong variant 'Around The World'. Students from Montana State University and Oxford Brookes University finalised the design together.

From Sunday 1st July - Sunday 8th July as part of the London Festival of Architecture the public are invited to engage with the pavilion and there will be subsequent talks and activities taking place throughout the two weeks. For details of the location in London see the London Festival of Architecture site here.

Playful Pavilion blog here.

Unit B 2012 Exhibition

The Unit B exhibition at Oxford Brookes University runs until 9th June. The exhibition then goes to London at Chetwoods Architects, 12-13 Clerkenwell Green, London with the celebratory opening on 28th June and then it runs until 8th July.
Invitiation with details here.

Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei Serpentine Pavilion of Memory

The Serpentine Pavilion opened on 1st June (closes 14th October). Describing their design concept Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei said: “Every year since 2000, a different architect has been responsible for creating the Serpentine Gallery’s summer Pavilion for Kensington Gardens. That makes eleven Pavilions so far, our contribution will be the twelfth. So many Pavilions in so many different shapes and out of so many different materials have been conceived and built that we tried instinctively to sidestep the unavoidable problem of creating an object, a concrete shape. “Our path to an alternative solution involves digging down some five feet into the soil of the park until we reach the groundwater. There we dig a waterhole, a kind of well, to collect all of the London rain that falls in the area of the Pavilion. In that way we incorporate an otherwise invisible aspect of reality in the park – the water under the ground – into our Pavilion. As we dig down into the earth we encounter a diversity of constructed realities such as telephone cables and former foundations. Like a team of archaeologists, we identify these physical fragments as remains of the eleven Pavilions built between 2000 and 2011. Their shape varies: circular, long and narrow, dots and also large, constructed hollows that have been filled in. These remains testify to the existence of the former Pavilions and their greater or lesser intervention in the natural environment of the park. “All of these foundations will now be uncovered and reconstructed. The old foundations form a jumble of convoluted lines, like a sewing pattern. A distinctive landscape emerges out of the reconstructed foundations which is unlike anything we could have invented; its form and shape is actually a serendipitous gift. The three-dimensional reality of this landscape is astonishing and it is also the perfect place to sit, stand, lie down or just look and be amazed. In other words, the ideal environment for continuing to do what visitors have been doing in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions over the past eleven years – and a discovery for the many new visitors anticipated for the London 2012 Olympic Games. “On the foundations of each single Pavilion, we extrude a new structure (supports, walls) as load-bearing elements for the roof of our Pavilion – eleven supports all told, plus our own column that we can place at will, like a wild card. The roof resembles that of an archaeological site. It floats some five feet above the grass of the park, so that everyone visiting can see the water on it, its surface reflecting the infinitely varied, atmospheric skies of London. For special events, the water can be drained off the roof as from a bathtub, from whence it f lows back into the waterhole, the deepest point in the Pavilion landscape. The dry roof can then be used as a dance floor or simply as a platform suspended above the park.”

 

 Domus article and video here
 Full details from the Serpentine Gallery  here

Unit B 2012 Summer Exhibition

Jon put together this film of second and third year unit work for the end of year exhibition.