The Black Chapel by Theaster Gates

On 10 June 2022, the Serpentine Gallery Summer Pavilion opens in Kensington Gardens. Year after year, masses of visitors from home and abroad make a pilgrimage there to experience the small architectural experiments. Sanaa, BIG, Peter Zumthor, Zaha Hadid, among many other renowned architects, have designed previous pavilions.

The rule is that the architect should not have realised a building in the United Kingdom before. This year's building, the Black Chapel by Theaster Gates, was realised with the help of Adjaye Associates. It is the 21st Serpentine Pavilion. Gates created a series of new tar works especially for it. On seven panels hanging from the ceiling, it honours the craft of his father, a roofer.

A working bronze bell, salvaged from St. Laurence Church in Chicago, stands next to the entrance. It is meant to point to the disappearance of spaces for spiritual gatherings that are to take place here during the summer: for instance, tea ceremonies, sound interventions and sacred music. The Black Chapel is intended as a meeting place, for meditation and contemplation. For this purpose, Gates created a cylindrical space that rises ten metres into the air and is entirely wrapped in black – it is the tallest pavilion to date. Supports made of nail plate trusses filled with plywood panels carry the roof.

It corresponds to a spoke-wheel construction made of wood and steel, with steel only used where additional strength and rigidity was needed. Walls, roof and the wooden floor, as well as the small, prefabricated foundations with low cement content, are connected with screws and bolts and can be completely dismantled. The rubber roofing membrane can also be easily separated from the wooden frame and reused or recycled. This results in a very low carbon footprint and allows the pavilion to be rebuilt in a new location after its time in Kensington Gardens.