Table Talk

Lina Ghotmeh’s deliberately modest Serpentine Pavilion is a modern, timber roundhouse that invites people to find common ground within leafy Kensington Gardens. The lightweight wooden structure with its distinctive pleated plywood roof, radiating glulam rafters, and glowing oculus creates an ineluctable draw to its center.

À table, the project’s formal name, was chosen for its association to convivial family dinners; Ghotmeh, a Lebanese-French architect who maintains a studio in Paris, even developed the cafe menu. But another important inspiration for the “celebratory space” comes from the toguna structures of the Dogon people in central Mali, West Africa. In her telling, toguna are designed “for community gatherings to discuss current issues,” with roofs so low that occupants must squat to enter and remain sitting inside.

The comparison of her lightweight, airy, temporary pavilion with a traditional Dogon thick-timbered, stone-columned, heavily thatched toguna is a head scratcher, especially since Dogon toguna are men-only meeting houses. The horse-free carousel is…