À Table, Linah Ghotmeh
Image courtesy of linaghotmeh.com and Iwan Baan
What if architecture were considered a gesture to activate the felt sense and connection?
Each June, @serpentineuk unveils a temporary pavilion in Kensington Gardens. The commissioned structure has become an international site for architectural experimentation, presenting projects by some of the world’s greatest architects.
This year’s edition, by the French-Lebanese architect @linaghotmeh will be a graceful invitation to connect with each other and the natural world. It’s title, “À Table” — the French call to sit together and share a meal —highlights the architect’s interest in creating a space for communing and sensing one another. “It is an encouragement to enter into a dialogue, to convene and to think about how we could re-instate and re-establish our relationship to nature and Earth,” Ghotmeh says.
Image courtesy of linaghotmeh.com and Iwan Baan
Stirring the Senses
Taking inspiration from togu’na huts of Mali, West Africa traditionally used for community gatherings, Ghotmeh foregrounds the felt sense of communing, which dictates the entire shape of the building. A rounded flower-shaped structure made of low-carbon and bio-based materials, its low-lying roof, and a natural lightwell and ventilation invites people to join in intimate conversation and to feel their interconnection to each other and their surroundings. These choices invite interactions filled with more compassion toward the other, and invite moments of more intimate honesty.
Image courtesy of linaghotmeh.com and Iwan Baan
How it Moves Us, Forward
“Ghotmeh’s Architecture of the Future is a practice that takes an in-depth, historical, and materially sensitive and multisensorial approach to its projects. We love that “À Table” is an active experiment in using architectural space as a tool for shifting our relationship to each other and the living world. We hope Lina Ghotmeh’s work will inspire a wider conversation about how our community infrastructure can help us more deeply embody collective strategies of regeneration and renewal.
Linah Ghotmeh
Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture is a critically acclaimed, international firm of architects, designers, and researchers based in Paris. The firm was established by French Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh. The firm designs ecologically and sustainably: the studio's projects derive their aesthetics from their close relationship with nature and express the essence of the materials from which they are fashioned.