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 Building’s sister title Building Design 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.

…