Serpentine Pavilion 2023

Serpentine is delighted to announce that Lebanese-born, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh, has been selected to conceive the 22nd Pavilion. Ghotmeh’s Pavilion will be unveiled at Serpentine South in June 2023 with Goldman Sachs supporting the annual project for the 9th consecutive year.

This pioneering and prestigious commission, which began in 2000 with Dame Zaha Hadid, has presented the first completed UK structures by some of the biggest names and emerging talents in international architecture. The Pavilion has evolved over the years as a participatory public and artistic platform for the Serpentine’s innovative, experimental, interdisciplinary, community and family programmes.

Ghotmeh leads her practice Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture in Paris, France, where she develops projects at the crossroads of architecture, art and design, on a global scale. Considerate of social conditions, environments and materials, her practice takes an in-depth 360 approach to its projects including research on location history, typology of the place, materials, resources, users’ habits etc. The architect’s designs are developed thorough historical research which emerge as interventions that enliven memories.

Since 2000, Serpentine has commissioned internationally renowned and emerging architects to create their first built structure in England. The aim of our Pavilion commission is to choose architects who consistently extend the boundaries of contemporary architectural practice and to introduce these practitioners to wider audiences. We invite the architects to design a Pavilion that is used as a meeting space and café by day and a forum for learning, debate and entertainment at night. The Serpentine Pavilion series was the first scheme of its kind worldwide at this level of ambition and presents commissions that push the boundaries of contemporary architectural practice.

Serpentine collaborates with architects in the same way it does with artists: to realise their vision for a project as they conceived it. The process of selecting the architect is also guided by similar criteria to those Serpentine uses for selecting artists for the exhibitions. It is led by the core curatorial thinking to create a dynamic programme that introduces contemporary architects to a wider audience. This is achieved through actual built structures rather than through an exhibition of models, drawings and images. The Pavilion commission continues to provide an unparalleled site for experiencing contemporary architecture.

The inaugural Pavilion was designed by Dame Zaha Hadid, who conceived the commissioning programme with former Serpentine Director Dame Julia Peyton- Jones in 2000. Previous Pavilions were designed by: Sumayya Vally, Counterspace (2021), Junya Ishigami (2019), Frida Escobedo (2018), Francis Kéré (2017), Bjarke Ingels Group – BIG (2016), selgascano (2015), Smiljan Radić (2014), Sou Fujimoto (2013), Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Peter Zumthor (2011), Jean Nouvel (2010), Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA (2009), Frank Gehry (2008), Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen (2007), Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond, with Arup (2006), Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura with Cecil Balmond, Arup (2006), MVRDV with Arup (2004, unrealised), Oscar Niemeyer (2003), Toyo Ito and Cecil Balmond, with Arup (2002), Daniel Libeskind with Arup (2001).