The celebrated American artist and activist Theaster Gates has been commissioned to design next year’s Serpentine Pavilion.

Gates, who is a professor at the department of visual arts at the University of Chicago, is an urban planner by training whose artistic interests span social practice, urban planning, installation, performance, ceramics and religion.

One of his most famous works is an urban housing intervention known as the Dorchester Projects. In 2009 he was moved to buy and renovate a run-down building in his home neighbourhood of the South Side of Chicago. By repeating the process he has now created 32 affordable housing units for impoverished artists and a performance space as well as a gallery in a former bank where he exhibits artefacts from African-American history.

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