Thursday, July 2nd will see the art world's most prestigious party, the Serpentine Summer Party, take place by the Serpentine Galleries amid the oxygenated greenery of Hyde Park, "the lungs of London". The Serpentine Summer Party is an annual fundraiser for the galleries, helping to further their educational remit. It extends on the wide and strong support and patronage enjoyed by the galleries and has long held the reputation of being a sumptuous and glamorous evening, on a par with Ascot, Wimbledon and the Chelsea Flower Show as one of the quintessential outdoor events during London's summer months.
This year's Serpentine Pavilion was designed by renowned Madrid-based architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano of the studio SelgasCano. SelgasCano's design is innovative and modern while connecting with the landscape of the park and gardens. Using a double-layered shell of opaque, translucent fluorine-based plastic (ETFE) in a variety of colours, the structure is designed with multiple entrances, allowing visitors to experience the Pavilion from diverse perspectives, all leading to the café in the heart of the structure.
Over the last 15 years, the Serpentine Pavilion has come to be a renowned international exhibition of architectural experimentation by presenting inspirational temporary structures by some of the world's greatest architects. The blending of the natural beauty of London's Kensington Gardens with a temporary structure that is both stunning and welcoming is part of the reason that the annual Pavilion exhibition has become a London landmark, and is one of the top-ten most visited architectural and design exhibitions in the world, according to the Serpentine Galleries website.
Among those supporting last year's Serpentine Galleries' Summer Party were the Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Bradley Cooper, Keira Knightley and her husband James Righton, Bryan Ferry, Orlando Bloom, Lily Allen, Ben Goldsmith, Pharrell Williams, who performed a live music set, and gallery patrons and trustees including executive Hollywood film producer Rebecca Wang and international architect Zaha Hadid.
Co-hosts for this year's Summer Party on July 2nd are of a particularly high-powered variety: joining Gallery Director Julia Peyton-Jones and Co-Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, Chairman and former Mayor of New York Michael R Bloomberg, and Zaha Hadid, a globally renowned architect who created the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics. She has also been one of the previously chosen architects for the Serpentine Pavilion and has recently become the first woman to win the Design Museum's Design of the Year award for the Heyder Aliyev culture centre in Baku.
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