Serpentine Pavilion Beijing

"Force" is the theme of this project. It is shapeless but exists everywhere. How to treat Force? - fight against it? comply with it or take advantage of it? - It is not only the attitude towards technology, but also about culture.

The Pavilion is a minimalist mechanical installation, which is composed of a series of layered spring steels with a decreasing number from the bottom to top that are merely connected by bolts. Their tips are dragged down by strong steel cables and simultaneously balanced by the beams on the bottom. It is like a piece of bow, taking advantaging of elasticity and tension from material to form a unsupported self-stabilizing structure. The repetition of bow components forms the arcade.

Because of the specific location of Wangfujing, Liu Jiakun used "Jin Zhuan" - a special floor tiles especially used for the Forbidden City in ancient China and fired in the southern region of Yangtze River - for the ground. This succinct and unique material hints the location and tradition. The gray - black structural longitudinal curves also correspond to the traditional shape of roof. Since each bow can be adjusted according to the tension, the contour of the eave can be adapted to the site, resulting in the change from the vertical arch to the horizontal, or the anti-warping. On this occasion, the Pavilion is close to the Forbidden City, so it used anti-warped to echo the cornice of Chinese traditional roof.

The theory of the "Bow-arch" structure is from the bow, which is also an extension of his exhibition - With the Wind - at the 2015 Venice Biennale. "With the Wind" is an unstable installation that is composed of fishing rod and hanging sword. I want to express a "dangerous balance of one change that makes all changes", to echo the theme of 2015 Venice Biennale, which is "the Future of the World."

The "Bow-arch" illustrates an internal tension, an elastic and static posture of all sides -- full of energy but in a graceful crescent shape. Arches, curves, repetition of a single component... the two works may be similar at first glance, but the status of force is widely different. The former is an unstable gravitational bend; the latter is a figurative and stable tension.
If "With the Wind" is a temporary art installation, "Bow-arch" has developed into a new and stable hierarchy of elastic structure for practical construction system.

Jiakun Architects