“Every year since 2000, a different architect has been responsible for creating the Serpentine Gallery’s Summer Pavilion. So many pavilions in so many different shapes and out of so many different materials have been conceived and built that we instinctively tried to sidestep the problem of creating an object, a concrete shape.
Our path to an alternative solution involved digging down five feet into the soil of the park until we reach the groundwater. There we [created] a kind of well to collect all of the London rain that falls in the area of the Pavilion.
As we dig down into the earth to reach the groundwater, we encounter a diversity of constructed realities such as telephone cables, remains of former foundations or backfills. Like a team of archaeologists, we identify these physical fragments as remains of the 11 pavilions between 2000 and 2011.
On the foundations of each single pavilion, we extrude a new structure as load-bearing elements for the roof of our Pavilion. The roof floats a few 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 flows back into the waterhole."