Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006 by Rem Koolhaas

In our next exclusive movie with Julia Peyton-Jones, the Serpentine Gallery director discusses the bulbous inflatable canopy that adorned Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond’s 2006 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. The 2006 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas of OMA with Cecil Balmond and engineering firm Arup, featured a giant helium-filled canopy. “I had this image in my mind that the bubble might sort of float away off into the ether,” Peyton-Jones says in the movie. “But of course it never did.” The balloon-like form was lowered when the weather was bad to avoid it getting damaged by strong winds. But the canopy extended above the roof of the Serpentine Gallery when it was fully inflated on fine days. “We had a very simple mechanism,” Peyton-Jones explains. “We could raise it like a balloon so it would completely transform the profile of the structure.”