Arup

Introduction: It is originally considered that a pavilion is a ‘portable accommodation; tent; hut; isolated construction, in the centre or on the sides of the main body of a building…’ Encyclopaedia Verbo (Siza 2005:5). Unlike other ordinary pavilions, however, the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, which is a series of contemporary architectural exhibition, has played an active role in creating various cultural and social occasions for the public every summer. Moreover, it has gone through some major challenges including costly construction process without allocated budget, a creation of large fund through sponsorship deals, and consultation with many expert advisory panels under the statutory regulations every year. Having undergone the complexities of the project system, it has become one of the cultural landmarks in the centre of London for the past decade.

This essay will examine the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion project, focusing on its impacts in the economic, cultural and social context. First, it will assess the appropriateness or raison d’etre of the project. Second, through the assessment, it will evaluate the project in practical and artistic aspects. Third, this paper will discuss the impacts of the arts sponsorship to assess the success of the financial aspects of the Gallery in its economic context. Fourth, it will also attempt to account for the cultural impacts of the project, from the perspectives of transience, uniqueness and immediacy in relation to pop-up cultural events as the current cultural context. The last, it will discuss the social context that the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion has produced and its status as a ‘democratic space’ for the public (Jones 2008: 31). In connection with this notion, this part will examine the audience participation in the Pavilion project.

In the summer of 1971, Ove Arup & Partners and Piano+Rogers Architects presented to the French government what they called a "3-dimensional wall" as part of their project bid for the Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou in Paris. This would resolve structural and expressive questions and unite three elements in a spatial sequence. The architects imagined the 3-dimensional wall as a 3D sequence of screens that would create original and interactive effects. The engineers saw it as a structure that, described as "brut," aspired to become a manifesto for a new metal structure in cast steel. Through recourse to a systematic analysis of published and unpublished sources and of interviews with the architects, engineers and administrators involved in the project, this paper reconstructs the evolution of the Centre Pompidou's 3-dimensional wall from its initial conception to the gradual loss of its original layered structure.

By exploring an emerging complex of interrelated research initiatives and design projects, this essay argues that resilience names a project that operates as a technique of governance and a global initiative to reimagine large scale urban development in the age of undifferentiated crisis. Through a network of power built on the confluence of private foundations and multinational firms, global governance frameworks, university research ‘laboratories’ and municipal governments, resilience has come to identify a new kind of ‘pre-emptive’ developmentalism—a renewed urban entrepreneurialism recoded with the language humanitarian aid, whose imperial overtones should not go unnoticed.