In the penultimate instalment of our exclusive video series, Julia Peyton-Jones explains why it was a gamble to commission the relatively young Sou Fujimoto to design the 2013 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion.
Born in 1971, Sou Fujimoto was the youngest architect to be commissioned to design a Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, until Bjarke Ingels was appointed this year.
Gallery director Peyton-Jones explains in the movie that the Serpentine Gallery tends to appoint older architects because they are better known outside of the architectural profession.
“The financial plan is predicated on the pavilion being sold,” she says. “So to work with a younger architect – who maybe doesn’t have that easy acclaim outside the profession – was a risk to us.”
If appointing Fujimoto in 2013 was a gamble, it certainly paid off.
“According to The Art Newspaper, it was the most visited free exhibition of design anywhere in the world in that year,” Peyton-Jones says. “That’s a great thing to be able to say.”
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