The South Korean architect has incorporated a climbing structure, a cafe and a library into an unpredictable space meant for coming together
o a belly flop.” “Spread your arms like Jesus and then jump.” The photographers at the press view for theare calling to me: I’ve ascended a rope climbing structure that is part of the design, and they fancy a shot of a moderately respectable gent flying on to a net underneath.
There’s also a small Library of Unread Books assembled by the artist Heman Chong and the archivist Renée Stall, and a sound installation, by the musician and composer Jang Young-Gyu, in addition to a cafe and events space, which are more habitual parts of the pavilion brief. All these are arranged in a star-shaped configuration of triangles and trapezia around an empty central circle.
Cho, 58, founded and runs the practice Mass Studies in Seoul. Growing up in the repressive atmosphere of South Korea’s military dictatorship, he saw architecture as a means of escape, “a visa to go wherever”. He studied at Columbia University, worked in Rotterdam for Rem Koolhaas’s practice OMA and set up a practice in New York before returning to his native country, by then a democracy.
If there’s a common theme to his work it’s a rather general desire to create “places for people to meet” in cities whose scale and architectural monotony threaten to make traditional urbanism impossible. So the pavilion is intended to be a gathering space, a little village of different uses, with places to sit built into the structure.
The Play Tower is a good addition, as sometimes Serpentine pavilions leave you wondering what exactly you are meant to do there, but it does pose another question. You might have as much or more fun, it must be said, in your local rec, and you might even find a cafe and a library nearby. But there’s still something special about clambering about a work of architectural invention, with an artist of the calibre of Shonibare on show next door.
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