Switzerland's 'starchitect' to build in Britain

Swiss architect Peter Zumthor's designs - like this chapel in a mountain hamlet - are usually located in remote and unexpected locations. Photo / Wikimedia Commons image by jonathanvlarocca

The enigmatic Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, whose designs sit in unexpected corners of the world - such as remote mountain tops and in fields - is to work in Britain for the first time. He will construct the Serpentine Gallery's temporary pavilion in London this year.

The Pritzker Prize-winner, who has refused to talk about his architectural creations ("Visit them", he simply told an illustrious gathering at the Royal Institute of British Architects 10 years ago) is famously particular about the projects he takes on. As a result, he has limited buildings in urban settings, none of which are in Britain - until now.

This will be the first time many aficionados will see his work. The pavilion, to be erected in Kensington Gardens, promises to be one of the quirkiest in the gallery's 11-year history of commissioning temporary summer structures.

Zumthor's design will apparently be a composed enclosure focused on a heavily planted garden. Visitors will walk along a dark tunnel, leading out into the light of the garden, which will be created by the influential Dutch designer, Piet Oudolf.

Zumthor says the motivation was to create a place of reflection within an urban context.

"The concept for this year's Pavilion is the hortus conclusus: a contemplative room; a garden within a garden. The building acts as a stage; a backdrop for the interior garden of flowers and light," he told The Independent.

"Through blackness and shadow, one enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden; a place abstracted from the world of noise and traffic and the smells of London - an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers. This experience will be intense and memorable, as will the materials themselves - full of memory and time."

The timber pavilion, wrapped in a black minimalist surface, will have staggered doorways offering multiple paths to the hidden inner garden.

Zumthor was born in Basel in 1943 and in the 1950s trained as a cabinet-maker with his father, after which he studied in Basel and New York.

The Serpentine project, conceived in 2000 by director Julia Peyton-Jones, has become an architectural experimentation site and follows a decade of structures by top world architects, like Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid and Olafur Eliasson.

- INDEPENDENT