When is a Building a Work of Art?

The Serpentine Pavilions.

When is a building a work of art? It’s safe to say that the average three bed semi, although a perfectly practical abode, is seldom an oil painting, but what about unique, architect designed buildings?

For the past decade, temporary structures which are indisputably works of art have popped up every summer in Kensington Gardens. Commissioned annually by the Serpentine Gallery, internationally renowned architects are falling over each other to be invited to submit a design for the Serpentine’s annual pavilion.

This year’s pavilion will be designed by multi award winning Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor, whose most recent triumph was the 2009 Pritzker Architecture Prize. His 2011 pavilion will enclose a garden by Dutch designer Piet Oudolf – a garden within a pavilion within a garden – it certainly sounds like art.

Jean Nouvel’s red pavilion in 2010 certainly fitted the bill of a work of art, resembling as it did a giant installation by sculptor Sir Antony Caro. The bold forms and vivid colour contrasted well with the surrounding soft shapes and greens of trees and grasses.

When I visited the red pavilion in September it seemed to me to be more successful as a work of art than as a building. Whilst each year’s pavilion is intended to provide space for lectures and other cultural events, the red pavilion appeared to merely function as a café, thus not necessarily meeting the architectural brief.

Each pavilion over the decade since the scheme was inaugurated in 2000 has been radically different from the previous structures. All were works of art, some more beautiful than others. The most beautiful was the 2007 work of Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher, which took the form of three monumental white lily petals made from stretched fabric. This was an exquisite work of art, but so impractical as a building that it only stood from the 12th to the 21st of July before being removed.

Zaha Hadid also designed the first ever Serpentine pavilion in 2000, when her radical interpretation of Marquee technology created a less graceful artwork, but a more practical internal space. Of course art does not have to be either beautiful or practical, but it usually has to make a physical statement, while Buildings do have to function on some kind of practical level.

From appearances, the pavilion which worked best as both building and artwork was the 2002 structure by Toyo Ito with Arup. A low structure whose sides were sculpted from pierced triangles and trapezoids, it looks to have provided a useful internal space within an exciting and harmonious building.

Whilst many architects like to think of their work as art, some people viewing, for example the Strata Tower at the Elephant and Castle, do beg to differ. This skyscraper could be straight from the land of Mordor, via Phillishave, but it was certainly designed, by BFLS, for developers Brookfield Construction. The Strata was awarded their Carbuncle Cup by Building Design, but most of the 500 odd apartments were sold before the tower was completed and this unmistakable building works very well for its residents. They like living there.

For the less wealthy flat-dwellers who live in Masterman House, a more humble tower block at the other end of Walworth Road, the Strata merely spoils their view of Canary Wharf! Whoever you ask, the Strata Tower is not likely to be described as art.

At the Serpentine Gallery architects prove to us, almost every year, that buildings can be artworks too, but how practical are they? Art does not need to be impractical, any more than architecture needs to be beautiful. It just seems a pity that most developers don’t think of the prestige they might earn from creating a work of art in the form of a really unique building.