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Jacques Herzog of architects Herzog & de Meuron gave Dezeen an exclusive, impromptu tour of their Serpentine Gallery Pavilion when it opened in London in May 2012.
In the movie, Herzog explains his jealousy that the fact that his office had worked in London before ruled them out of the Serpentine commission -- which goes to architects that have never built before in the UK -- and his delight at the ruse employed by the Serpentine Gallery to get around this: by teaming up with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, their co-collaboraotor on the Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing, to form a team that satisfied the rules.
Herzog also explains why they decided to bury the pavilion in the ground beneath a raised pool of water and why they based the design on the imagined archaeology of the previous pavilions that had occupied the site.
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