"There's no such thing as a blank slate in Mexico" - Frida Escobedo.
I'd left it late, the last day in fact, to get down to Kensington Gardens to check out this year's Serpentine Pavilion. I'd been down to see the Bjarke Ingels Group's impressive (though not pretty) structure in late July of 2016 and last year I was even prompter, posting my assessment of Francis Kere's bravura building before our seventh month was even halfway through.
Of course, there's been more than three pavilions on the site. Eighteen in fact, and I've seen more than I haven't, but I only started writing these blogs in February 2016 so the rest will remain, vague and blurring into each other, in my mind. At least until somebody puts together a retrospective.
Truth be told, I'm not sure Escobedo's effort would linger long in the mind either if it wasn't for me writing about it. It's not that it was ugly. It's not that it wasn't different. Just that it wasn't really anything much. You could still get a croissant, an Americano, a Peroni, a selection of muffins, or even a ham hock and chunky mayo sandwich made from farmhouse bread there but I wasn't tempted too. Not even by the Peroni. Imagine that!
Mexico City based Escobedo is young for an architect,
she's yet to hit her 40th birthday, and she is, rather obviously, a
woman. Both are which are absolutely fine. Which seems a strange thing to
have to qualify but so barmy, racist, and misogynist are much of the right wing now (do people really give a fuck about Dr Who's gender?) that any chance to point out their idiocy should be taken.
Of
course this neither makes the pavilion good nor does it make it bad. In
truth it is neither. It is somewhat average. What we're informed she's
trying to do is to merge the the vernacular style of the traditional
Mexican courtyard and its interplay of light, water, and geometry with
the Prime Meridian line at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
A
noble and generous idea, certainly, to match the styles of her homeland
with those of the country she's building in (previously, it appears,
her only buildings outside Mexico have been in Portugal and the USA).
But one that you'd only be able to comprehend by reading the sign
outside and I'm not sure architecture is something you should need to
have to read about to understand.
The idea is the direction of the Prime Meridian line's northward arm decides where the portals to the pavilion are and that this
axis pivots through the admittedly fine courtyard. It explains why some
of the tables and chairs are situated in little corners like those
lovely old pubs with booths that seem ripe for extended drinking
sessions and furtive fumbling and fondling beneath the furniture.
Apparently
when the light is right the shadows can affect the interior mood of the
space but that could, surely, be true of any light/shadow scenario. You
only have to walk through Hyde Park (past the London Mastaba,
now being slowly dismantled) to see that. Or, perhaps, by coming in
October I'd missed the pavilion in the height of summer (and what a
summer it was) when it was as at its absolute best.
The mirrored section of the roof was quite pleasant, the building
materials did not offend, and the water, although first looking like
they'd suffered a burst pipe, worked best of all. You can easily imagine
that in the height of summer that kids of all ages would have loved
splashing about in it.
But while I could admire the
thought behind the building and even, in a slightly abstract way, the
edifice itself - I didn't find myself wanting to hang around long. I
didn't want to sit there when there was a beautiful park, several
beautiful parks, surrounding it. We can't, of course, compete with
nature so we can only aim to be sympathetic to it, enjoy it when it's kind to
us, and protect ourselves from it as best we can when it's less
friendly - or even deadly.
I really wanted to enjoy
Frida Escobedo's pavilion more than I did, I'm a liker of things for the
most part, but I came away feeling it was a little bit of a missed
opportunity. Thinking, and confirming with even the most basic Google
search, that she hadn't used this opportunity to present her work in its
fullest glory.
But, hey, as we established earlier, forty years old is
still very young for an architect. One mediocre temporary structure
should not hold her back. Frida volvera a construir y ella construira
mejor tambien.
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