Latest news with #HansUlrichObrist
New York Times
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Juan Mata interview: ‘I love Marcus Rashford – him staying would be a win-win'
You will know by now that Juan Mata is not your typical former Manchester United player, but this scene is typically Juan Mata: perched on a balcony in a dimly lit hangar, under the dizzying high ceilings of Manchester's Aviva Studios, overlooking a dozen or so creations that sit at the intersection of two of his passions: art and football. Advertisement This is an exhibition — his exhibition — titled 'Football City, Art United', part of the biennial Manchester International Festival. Mata's involvement came about after writer Josh Willdigg noticed him liking posts on the Instagram page of renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist to a slightly obsessive degree. A meeting between Mata and Obrist was subsequently arranged and over a coffee at Manchester's Whitworth gallery they asked what art shared in common with football. What was the answer? 'I would say curiosity — curiosity and the will to learn from a different world,' says Mata. 'I always thought that art and football have some similarities that have been overlooked over the years, the way that you can express yourself through something, the way that you can impact society in many ways, the way to communicate with people.' Those themes were explored in Mata's first exhibition, 'The Trequartista', which was part of the festival's 2023 edition. Now, he has enlisted the help of some of his fellow professional players to delve deeper into those questions, pairing Edgar Davids, Vivianne Miedema and Lotte Wubben-Moy up with internationally recognised artists. He is not the only United name of past or present involved. Ella Toone, Shinji Kagawa and, inevitably, Eric Cantona have all collaborated with artists on pieces for the installation. Toone's is maybe the most striking: a large mask hanging from the ceiling inspired by her spirit animal — a Shetland pony. Personally, I wasn't prepared for Kagawa and artist Chikyuu no Osakana Pon-chan's depiction of Wayne Rooney as a manga character. 'Me neither!' says Mata. Despite this curatorial side hustle and a nine-month gap spent between clubs last year, Mata is very much still a footballer first and a cultural tastemaker second. He is still playing and, almost two decades after his senior debut, the 37-year-old spent last season with Western Sydney Wanderers in Australia's A-League. Advertisement Although Western Sydney's season ended in play-off disappointment, Mata still had something to celebrate at the end of the campaign. A question about Real Oviedo, his boyhood club who have returned to La Liga for the first time in 24 years, induces a fist-pump and a cry of 'finally!' His schedule did not allow him to be in Oviedo for last month's play-off final, although he revelled vicariously through friends, family and the club captain, Santi Cazorla. Both bought shares in the club back in 2012, when Oviedo were facing financial peril. 'I am especially happy for Cazorla — you cannot meet a better person in football, and the challenges that he has been through on a personal level,' he says. 'If somebody, if anyone deserved it, it was him.' What about this other home of his, though? His city for eight-and-a-half years. Wherever he is in the world, he seems to be regularly drawn back. 'I love Manchester. I love the club. I love the people. I loved the appreciation that I received,' he says. On his returns, he can reflect on and appreciate an Old Trafford career that ended with three major trophies and a game-saving goal in an FA Cup final and that memorable win at Anfield, but which unfortunately coincided exactly with United's fall from dominance. The three years since, despite more silverware, has only seen further regression. 'I hoped that when I left the following seasons, with new players, new coaches, things were going to work,' Mata admits. 'Don't get me wrong, the club has been winning trophies, but I understand that the demands of this club are so high and it's probably not good enough.' Perhaps diplomatically, he puts that down to external rather than internal factors. 'Football today is very competitive; all the clubs are improving. They're having bigger budgets, better players… you really have to have a great coach and great culture in the club to get results.' In Ruben Amorim though, Mata feels United have such a coach ready to instill such a culture. 'My impression from afar — and I'm very far in Australia — is that he's got a lot of energy. I think it's needed.' Mata has not met Amorim yet, on account of often being on the other side of the world, although regularly watches his press conferences and has liked what he has seen. '(His) enthusiasm, energy and passion for what he does and passion for helping the club. I love that.' Part of Amorim's culture-setting has involved the exile and likely exit of Marcus Rashford. On Friday, The Athletic reported that United had permitted Rashford and four other players with uncertain futures — Jadon Sancho, Antony, Tyrell Malacia and Alejandro Garnacho — to delay their returns to pre-season training, which officially starts today. Rashford — who has also lost his No 10 shirt at United, which has been given to new signing Matheus Cunha — is a player whose rise from the academy Mata witnessed first-hand almost a decade ago. 'I saw his first training (session) with us. I love him. As a kid, I called him 'the wonderkid',' he says. 'The way he played was fearless, you could feel he could win a game by himself at any time when he was playing at his best.' That is why, in an ideal world, he would like Rashford to remain a United player. 'As a Man United fan and as a friend of Marcus, I wish that he can succeed here because it's his club, his boyhood club,' he says. 'I don't know what's going to happen but if he stays and he can actually be happy and enjoy, I think it will be a win-win situation for both the club and him.' It is a time of change at United, though, and a painful one. Mata personally knows many members of staff who have lost their jobs as part of the club's two separate rounds of redundancies over the last year. 'It's difficult for me to say, of course, and I cannot speak if I'm not there, if I don't know. It's true that things are changing in the club. I just hope it's for the best because I want the best for the club.' Advertisement What he believes cannot be lost in the upheaval is that word again: culture. 'It always has been very useful to me to understand where I was. I still do that now in Australia, even now it's a different story,' he says. 'But I think that's very important from a club point of view and from a player point of view.' It was something Mata always seemed to intuitively grasp during his time in Manchester: that there is a thread running between a football club and what happens in the city that surrounds it, whether that be in its pubs, parks or art galleries. And so it is not surprising that this shared culture and the history that stems from it is still, more than anything else, what gives him hope for next season and beyond. 'I'm optimistic because I really believe that this club is way too big, way too powerful, way too good to not be where it can be,' he insists. 'My hope, my will is that it will be soon. I don't know how long it's going to take, but what I know is that Man United will be back to where they belong.'
Forbes
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Five Standout Exhibitions To See In Venice During The Architecture Biennale
Tolia Astakhishvili, James Richards, Our Friends In the Audience, 2024 Tolia Astakhishvili & James Richards. With the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale in full swing, the city is alive with cultural dialogue, cross-disciplinary experiments, and bold new visions for the future of space and society. Amid the vast constellation of exhibitions and events I selected six of my highlights—spanning radical architecture, diasporic storytelling, and post-digital cosmology—all unfolding across Venice's iconic venues and secret locations. Here are five compelling exhibitions to experience in Venice during La Biennale di Architecture: Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation – To love and devour , curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist in Dorsoduro; Beyti Beytak. My Home is Your Home at ACP–Palazzo Franchetti and in the Giardini; Berggruen Arts & Culture – The Next Earth: Computation, Crisis, Cosmology At Palazzo Diedo; Gallery 193 – Bricks and Grids ; Maria Helena Vieira da Silva – Anatomy of Space at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the launch of Casa Sanlorenzo. Together, these six offerings interweave architectural discourse with landscape, ecology, culture, and personal space—demonstrating how Venice's Biennale extends far beyond its official pavilions, into living, breathing creative ecosystems across the city. Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation — Tolia Astakhishvili: To love and devour . Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist Tolia Astakhishvili, my emptiness, 2025 Tolia Astakhishvili A standout of this year's Architecture Biennale is Tolia Astakhishvili: To love and devour at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation. Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist presents a compelling, idea-rich exhibition and Georgian artist Tolia Astakhishvili transforms the historic interiors of a historic Venetian edifice previously belonging to painter Ettore Tito during the 1920s into a living dialogue with site-specific artwork. Astakhishvili invited eight other artists to take part in the exhibition; Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Zurab Astakhishvili, Thea Djordjadze, Heike Gallmeier, Rafik Greiss, Dylan Peirce, James Richards, and Maka Sanadze. The resulting show probes the boundaries between art, ecology, and architecture, inviting architects, artists, and thinkers to reimagine spatial futures in an era of ecological urgency. As ever, Obrist brings his signature blend of intellectual rigor and curatorial curiosity to this deeply interdisciplinary project. Astakhishvili lived and worked at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation during the first few months of 2025, engaging with the space and transforming the building through structural modifications to the walls and spaces, Astakhishvili incorporates text, painting and drawing to create a temporary spatial intervention with a profound sense of destruction, distortion and fragmentation. Astakhishvili's delicate drawings, featured in the installation, further connects to the significance of drawing in Nicoletta Fiorucci's art collection. Tolia Astakhishvili: To love and devour is at the NICOLETTA FIORUCCI FOUNDATION, Dorsoduro 2829, Venice until 23rd November, 2025. Qatar Museums — Beyti Beytak. My Home is Your Home. La mia casa è la tua casa Yasmeen Lari - Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, Community Centre, 2024. Installation view. 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Photo_ Giuseppe Miotto - Marco Cappelletti Studio Qatar Museums presentation of Beyti Beytak marks Qatar's first official participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale with a resonant exploration of the architecture of belonging. Staged across two prestigious venues, Beyti Beytak —Arabic for 'My home is your home'—invites visitors to reflect on domestic space as both sanctuary and symbol. The two-part exhibition showcases MENASA-region architects and weaves together architecture, vernacular traditions, design and storytelling by linking traditional Middle Eastern values with global themes of displacement. By exploring hospitality in architecture and urban landscapes across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, the exhibition examines how modern and contemporary architecture responds to community needs. In the Giardini, Pakistani architect Yasmeen Lari's bamboo Community Centre showcases humanitarian architectural techniques developed through relief efforts by the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan. The structure features a veranda and dome topped with a waterproof palm frond roof. At ACP-Palazzo Franchetti, works from over 30 architects spanning three generations are displayed through drawings, photographs, models, and archival materials. The exhibition explores themes of community and belonging through sections on oasis reinvention, city housing, community centres, mosques, museums, and gardens, with a special focus on Doha's architecture and urbanism. Beyti Beytak. My Home is Your Home. La mia casa è la tua casa is at the Giardini della Biennale and ACP-Palazzo Franchetti, San Marco 2847 until 23rd November, 2025. Berggruen Arts & Culture — The Next Earth: Computation, Crisis, Cosmology Installation view, The Next Earth. Computation, Crisis, Cosmology at Palazzo Diedo, Berggruen Arts & Culture. Photo © Joan Porcel At once speculative and urgent, The Next Earth: Computation, Crisis, Cosmology– a collateral event of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition–considers how computational technologies and cosmological thinking might inform planetary futures. Presented by Berggruen Arts & Culture, the exhibition gathers artists, technologists, and architects to examine the interlocking systems—ecological, digital, and existential—that shape life on Earth. It's a heady, expansive vision of architecture that moves far beyond buildings. this collision of Antikythera's planetary intelligence and MIT Architecture's climate work sparks a visionary dialogue on planetary computation, ecological crisis, and architectural futures. The Next Earth unites two leading research initiatives–Antikythera's Planetary Sapience and MIT Architecture's Climate Work: Un/Worlding the Planet–and examines urgent questions about the future of our planet and the role of architecture within that future. The Next Earth utilises Antikythera's research in order to examine the Earth as a constantly evolving megastructure through historical artefacts and immersive installations. Forty visionary MIT Architecture faculty projects that reimagine sustainable design practices are showcased in the exhibition, which invites visitors to reconsider the impact of humans on the environment. The Next Earth: Computation, Crisis, Cosmology is at Palazzo Diedo – Berggruen Arts & Culture, Venice, Italy Cannaregio 2386, 30121 Venezia until 23rd November, 2025. Gallery 193 — Bricks and Grids , curated by Miriam Bettin 'Bricks and Grids' at Gallery 193 Venice/ Gabriele Bortoluzzi Gallery 193 Venice/ Gabriele Bortoluzzi Gallery 193 is presenting Bricks and Grids within the context of the Architecture Biennale. Curator Miriam Bettin brings together Zoila Andrea Coc-Chang and Modou Dieng Yacine—two rising international artists whose practices delve into identity, memory, and diasporic belonging. Their new works, spanning sculpture, installation, and mixed media, use architectural motifs as both metaphor and material, interrogating how personal and political histories are built—and unbuilt. By exploring material systems and urban form, the exhibition rethinks modular construction and foregrounds the tactile and symbolic languages of structure. Bricks and Grids is at Gallery 193, Dorsoduro 993/994, 30123 Venezia until 27th July, 2025. Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of Space at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, The Hallway or Interior (Le Couloir ou intérieur), 1948, oil and graphite on canvas, 46 x 55 cm. Private collection © Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, by SIAE 2025 A quiet triumph at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Anatomy of Space – curated by Flavia Frigeri of London's National Portrait Gallery–offers a rare look at the work of Portuguese-French painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908–1992). Featuring around 70 works spanning the 1930s–1980s, the exhibition showcases Vieira da Silva's mastery of spatial abstraction where cubism meets futurism. Known for her intricate, architectural canvases, Vieira da Silva's work mirrors the gridlike, almost map-like language of cityscapes and interiors. Curator Flavia Frigeri brings a thoughtful perspective to this modernist master's spatial poetics, making the exhibition both historically significant and hauntingly contemporary. The architectural nature of Vieira da Silva's paintings makes this exhibition a perfect choice to show during the Venice Biennale di Architettura. While you're there, don't miss the permanent collection, for no trip to Venice is complete without revisiting the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Nestled on the Grand Canal, this iconic space is home to seminal works by Jackson Pollock, Max Ernst, and Agnes Martin, among others. The permanent collection remains a cornerstone of 20th-century art history and continues to resonate alongside the Biennale's more ephemeral offerings—a timeless reminder that innovation often begins with visionaries who dared to break the grid. Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of Space is at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection until 15th September, 2025.
CNN
05-06-2025
- Business
- CNN
Designing the Serpentine Pavillion is an architect's dream job. Meet the woman behind this year's building
Even on a grey, drizzly morning in London, entering this year's Serpentine Pavilion — the 25th architectural structure to be erected in Kensington Gardens — will bathe you in a warm glow. Packed in between curved wooden beams, translucent honeyed yellow square panels filter the weak sunlight into a more inviting summer afternoon hue. 'I try to work with light,' architect Marina Tabassum told CNN ahead of Friday's public opening. 'On a sunny day, it's glowing. But even when it's not sunny you get to see a softer effect of the light coming through.' Since 2000, the chance to design a public space in the center of London is awarded by the Serpentine Gallery each year to an architect who hasn't built in Britain before. 'London as a global city has a very international exchange with music, fashion and art,' said gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist, who has been working on the project every summer since 2006, in a video call. 'It's an interesting paradox. The UK has produced so many architects who radiate internationally… But has not historically welcomed foreign architects to build (here.).' Tabassum, who founded her own architectural firm in Bangladesh in 2005, is more used to building temporary structures for climate refugees in India than manicured European public spaces. In 2023, she designed flood-proof, flat-pack homes for those living in Bangladesh's river deltas — where heavy riverbank erosion has resulted in entire towns lost to water. The tall, free-standing treehouses were designed to be folded and moved elsewhere by their inhabitants who, because of the area's vulnerability to climate change, live a transitory lifestyle. Impermanence, therefore, is a key part of Tabassum's architectural DNA. 'When I started studying architecture, (my university) was always referencing (architect) Louis Kahn's (Capitol Complex in Dhaka),' she said, referring to National Parliament Building. 'It has a presence which gives you the sense that architecture is here to stay, that it can last for maybe hundreds of years… Once we started working more in the coasts of Bangladesh, in the places where land constantly moves, that's when we realized that architecture doesn't have to be static.' While this might be her first building project in the UK, as well as outside of Bangladesh , according to Tabassum, her familiarity with constructing for the present, rather than forever, is what made the project less daunting. 'The pavilion seemed almost similar (to my previous work),' reflected Tabassum, who has traveled to London several times to see the past structures in person. 'It has a different shape and form, but it actually holds similar values.' Titled 'A Capsule in Time,' Tabassum's pod-shaped shelter is made entirely of wood . In its center stands a semi-mature gingko tree — a rare climate resistant species of flora that can withstand temperatures ranging between -30 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The tree's symbolic defiance is 'the heart and soul of the entire space,' said Tabassum, and will remain in the gardens after the structure is disassembled. The first Serpentine Pavilion was designed by Zaha Hadid — the celebrated Iraqi-British architect and artist who, at the time, had never built in the country, even after three decades of living in the UK. The marquee was intended to be a one-night shelter for a fundraising dinner organized by the gallery, but the unique shape and atmosphere of Hadid's work struck one attendee in particular: former member of parliament and then secretary of state for culture, media and sport, Lord Chris Smith. 'There was a lot of excitement around it,' said Obrist. Smith was able to receive the correct planning permission that enabled the single-use tent to stand for three months. 'Everyone was very surprised by the idea that the pavilion could stay a bit longer,' Obrist added. In the 25 years since then, the Serpentine has platformed celebrated 'starchitects' like Rem Koolhaas to Frank Gehry, as well as giving lesser-known names their big UK break. 'The pavilion in our architectural world is something quite exciting,' said Tabassum, noting that 'for a long time, we (architects) look forward to who will be making it and what will be the design.' For some, it's a gateway to international acclaim and opportunity. Two former pavilion designers have gone on to win Pritzker Prizes — including Liu Jiakun, who took home the honor this year — while others, such as Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, have been awarded RIBA Royal Gold Medals. Many go on to secure prestigious new projects restoring or reimagining global landmarks. 'Initially the pavilion scheme was very much focused on well-known architects who had long careers,' said Obrist. 'It's really exciting now that we can also work with more emerging voices.' While it may seem reductive to draw a straight line from the Serpentine's summertime structures to illustrious, award-winning architectural careers, the pavilion offers up-and-coming talent a powerful springboard to the global stage. At least that is the opinion of Diébédo Francis Kéré, the other pavilion designer that went onto win the Pritzker Prize (and was the first Black architect to receive the honor). The Burkinabé-German designer was celebrated for the geometric, cobalt blue pavilion that he erected in 2017. 'When I was called to do it, I didn't believe it was me,' Kéré said over the phone from Berlin. 'I was not that established when I did the Serpentine pavilion. Yes, I was established with the work that was (built) in Africa, but being recognized internationally — it was because of the Serpentine.' Last year Frida Escobedo, who was the youngest architect to design the pavilion in 2018, was commissioned to help renovate two major institutions — the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Her new wing at the Met, set to open in 2030, will be the first designed by a woman in the museum's 154-year history. Similarly, Lina Ghotmeh, the Lebanese-born, France-based architect behind the 2023 canteen-style pavilion named 'Á Table,' is currently working on revamping the British Museum in London. 'It was a lovely experience,' she told CNN of her Serpentine project from her studio in Paris. '(The pavilion) attracts so many people from different disciplines. Sometimes architecture tends to be an enclosed profession,' said Ghotmeh. 'I think it's really a great way to get architecture closer to the public.' According to Obrist, it's London's running community who are the most appreciative of the space. The sloping, circular ramp of Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen's 2007 pavilion (which was compared at the time to a giant spinning top) was 'a jogger's favourite ramp,' said Obrist. 'Gehry was great for stretching,' he added of the 2008 timber theater — whose haphazard wooden roof always appeared on the brink of collapse. After its four-month run, the pavilion is dismantled and carefully stored away — though hopefully not for long. 'The pavilions always find a second life somewhere,' said Obrist, who adds that they are only ever sold for the price of the material and what it costs to build. Chilean architect Smiljan Radić's 2014 futuristic shell-like structure now lives in the English countryside at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, nestled in the gallery's wildflower meadow; while Japanese designer Sou Fujimoto's mesmeric shimmering matrix from 2013 is permanently installed outside the National Art Gallery in Tirana, Albania. Gehry's crumbling wooden creation resides in a vineyard in Aix-en-Provence, and Kéré's work was bought by the Ilham Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Once every pavilion is reinstated — and at least four are privately owned by collectors — Obrist hopes to one day design a map marking their forever homes for tourists and travelers . 'Maybe when (people) are in a different city they can go and visit them, which would be fun.' Tabassum has already begun considering the retirement plan for 'A Capsule in Time.' Her main desire is not so different from that of the many Brits who will be visiting the building this summer: 'I really hope it goes to a place where there is nice sun and a sunny atmosphere,' she told CNN, 'so that it gives you that glowing feeling once you're inside that space.'
CNN
05-06-2025
- Business
- CNN
Designing the Serpentine Pavillion is an architect's dream job. Meet the woman behind this year's building
Even on a grey, drizzly morning in London, entering this year's Serpentine Pavilion — the 25th architectural structure to be erected in Kensington Gardens — will bathe you in a warm glow. Packed in between curved wooden beams, translucent honeyed yellow square panels filter the weak sunlight into a more inviting summer afternoon hue. 'I try to work with light,' architect Marina Tabassum told CNN ahead of Friday's public opening. 'On a sunny day, it's glowing. But even when it's not sunny you get to see a softer effect of the light coming through.' Since 2000, the chance to design a public space in the center of London is awarded by the Serpentine Gallery each year to an architect who hasn't built in Britain before. 'London as a global city has a very international exchange with music, fashion and art,' said gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist, who has been working on the project every summer since 2006, in a video call. 'It's an interesting paradox. The UK has produced so many architects who radiate internationally… But has not historically welcomed foreign architects to build (here.).' Tabassum, who founded her own architectural firm in Bangladesh in 2005, is more used to building temporary structures for climate refugees in India than manicured European public spaces. In 2023, she designed flood-proof, flat-pack homes for those living in Bangladesh's river deltas — where heavy riverbank erosion has resulted in entire towns lost to water. The tall, free-standing treehouses were designed to be folded and moved elsewhere by their inhabitants who, because of the area's vulnerability to climate change, live a transitory lifestyle. Impermanence, therefore, is a key part of Tabassum's architectural DNA. 'When I started studying architecture, (my university) was always referencing (architect) Louis Kahn's (Capitol Complex in Dhaka),' she said, referring to National Parliament Building. 'It has a presence which gives you the sense that architecture is here to stay, that it can last for maybe hundreds of years… Once we started working more in the coasts of Bangladesh, in the places where land constantly moves, that's when we realized that architecture doesn't have to be static.' While this might be her first building project in the UK, as well as outside of Bangladesh , according to Tabassum, her familiarity with constructing for the present, rather than forever, is what made the project less daunting. 'The pavilion seemed almost similar (to my previous work),' reflected Tabassum, who has traveled to London several times to see the past structures in person. 'It has a different shape and form, but it actually holds similar values.' Titled 'A Capsule in Time,' Tabassum's pod-shaped shelter is made entirely of wood . In its center stands a semi-mature gingko tree — a rare climate resistant species of flora that can withstand temperatures ranging between -30 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The tree's symbolic defiance is 'the heart and soul of the entire space,' said Tabassum, and will remain in the gardens after the structure is disassembled. The first Serpentine Pavilion was designed by Zaha Hadid — the celebrated Iraqi-British architect and artist who, at the time, had never built in the country, even after three decades of living in the UK. The marquee was intended to be a one-night shelter for a fundraising dinner organized by the gallery, but the unique shape and atmosphere of Hadid's work struck one attendee in particular: former member of parliament and then secretary of state for culture, media and sport, Lord Chris Smith. 'There was a lot of excitement around it,' said Obrist. Smith was able to receive the correct planning permission that enabled the single-use tent to stand for three months. 'Everyone was very surprised by the idea that the pavilion could stay a bit longer,' Obrist added. In the 25 years since then, the Serpentine has platformed celebrated 'starchitects' like Rem Koolhaas to Frank Gehry, as well as giving lesser-known names their big UK break. 'The pavilion in our architectural world is something quite exciting,' said Tabassum, noting that 'for a long time, we (architects) look forward to who will be making it and what will be the design.' For some, it's a gateway to international acclaim and opportunity. Two former pavilion designers have gone on to win Pritzker Prizes — including Liu Jiakun, who took home the honor this year — while others, such as Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, have been awarded RIBA Royal Gold Medals. Many go on to secure prestigious new projects restoring or reimagining global landmarks. 'Initially the pavilion scheme was very much focused on well-known architects who had long careers,' said Obrist. 'It's really exciting now that we can also work with more emerging voices.' While it may seem reductive to draw a straight line from the Serpentine's summertime structures to illustrious, award-winning architectural careers, the pavilion offers up-and-coming talent a powerful springboard to the global stage. At least that is the opinion of Diébédo Francis Kéré, the other pavilion designer that went onto win the Pritzker Prize (and was the first Black architect to receive the honor). The Burkinabé-German designer was celebrated for the geometric, cobalt blue pavilion that he erected in 2017. 'When I was called to do it, I didn't believe it was me,' Kéré said over the phone from Berlin. 'I was not that established when I did the Serpentine pavilion. Yes, I was established with the work that was (built) in Africa, but being recognized internationally — it was because of the Serpentine.' Last year Frida Escobedo, who was the youngest architect to design the pavilion in 2018, was commissioned to help renovate two major institutions — the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Her new wing at the Met, set to open in 2030, will be the first designed by a woman in the museum's 154-year history. Similarly, Lina Ghotmeh, the Lebanese-born, France-based architect behind the 2023 canteen-style pavilion named 'Á Table,' is currently working on revamping the British Museum in London. 'It was a lovely experience,' she told CNN of her Serpentine project from her studio in Paris. '(The pavilion) attracts so many people from different disciplines. Sometimes architecture tends to be an enclosed profession,' said Ghotmeh. 'I think it's really a great way to get architecture closer to the public.' According to Obrist, it's London's running community who are the most appreciative of the space. The sloping, circular ramp of Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen's 2007 pavilion (which was compared at the time to a giant spinning top) was 'a jogger's favourite ramp,' said Obrist. 'Gehry was great for stretching,' he added of the 2008 timber theater — whose haphazard wooden roof always appeared on the brink of collapse. After its four-month run, the pavilion is dismantled and carefully stored away — though hopefully not for long. 'The pavilions always find a second life somewhere,' said Obrist, who adds that they are only ever sold for the price of the material and what it costs to build. Chilean architect Smiljan Radić's 2014 futuristic shell-like structure now lives in the English countryside at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, nestled in the gallery's wildflower meadow; while Japanese designer Sou Fujimoto's mesmeric shimmering matrix from 2013 is permanently installed outside the National Art Gallery in Tirana, Albania. Gehry's crumbling wooden creation resides in a vineyard in Aix-en-Provence, and Kéré's work was bought by the Ilham Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Once every pavilion is reinstated — and at least four are privately owned by collectors — Obrist hopes to one day design a map marking their forever homes for tourists and travelers . 'Maybe when (people) are in a different city they can go and visit them, which would be fun.' Tabassum has already begun considering the retirement plan for 'A Capsule in Time.' Her main desire is not so different from that of the many Brits who will be visiting the building this summer: 'I really hope it goes to a place where there is nice sun and a sunny atmosphere,' she told CNN, 'so that it gives you that glowing feeling once you're inside that space.'
