Construction time again #3:Frida Escobedo and the Serpentine Pavilion

"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.