This year’s Serpentine Pavilion has been designed by Mass Studies, the South Korean practice founded by Minsuk Cho. In a break from previous incarnations, rather than having a primary large space with a loosely defined purpose, Cho’s concept seeks to provide an explicit programme of uses for the five distinct modules that are ranged around its central courtyard. These include a ‘tea house’, auditorium-cum-great hall, acoustic installation, ‘play tower’ and a library of ‘unread books’.

The result is a little like entering an exploded diagram, with the five rooms seemingly straining to escape each other’s gravitational pull. While a circular open-air ‘madang’ (Korean for ‘yard’) imposes a formal order on the overall composition, it has a tension that pulls and pushes the visitor between the varied sensory experiences within each of these five “content machines”.

Cho tells BD that the timber-framed pavilion seeks to blend a contextual approach with the more wilful imposition of an almost site-defying concept. “Sometimes I come up with some ideas and then go to the site and realise it’s completely the wrong idea”, Cho explains. “But it’s always good to have the conceptual and contextual – the two things together.”

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