The four Summer Houses accompanying the 2016 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion on display in London’s Kensington Gardens are now available for purchase The Modern House, a British real estate agency specializing in modernist buildings by British architects. The quartet of supporting installations is the first of its kind for the gallery’s summer series, which is in its 16th year, and were designed by firms NLÉ, Barkow Leibinger, Asif Khan, and architect Yona Friedman.
This is also the first time a structure built for the annual program has been sold through an agency. Typically, the sole Serpentine Gallery Pavilion is sold to a private buyer, and usually before it has been built. According to The Telegraph, BIG’s undulating construction comprising several, hollow fiberglass bricks was purchased by Canadian developer Westbank.
The Modern Houses’s website lists prices for all but one of the houses at £95,000 (about $124,902); Barkow Leibinger’s curving timber Summer House is listed at £125,000 (or $164,345). The sales will be managed by U.K. real estate agent Knight Frank.
Three of the four Summer Houses are presented as an interpretation of either the 1734 Neoclassical Queen Caroline’s Temple or of another house, both in Kensington Gardens, that longer exists but used to rotate a full 360 degrees for panoramic views (both of which were designed by architect William Kent). The fourth house, by Asif Khan, presents the recreation of the moment of where the sun would have set in 1683 in relation to the temple on the grounds.
Barkow Leibinger
Yona Friedman
Asif Khan
