An existing building, a new use
Serpentine North occupies a former gunpowder magazine in London’s Hyde Park. The Grade II* listed building dates from 1805; its original architect is unknown. A renovation directed by Zaha Hadid converted it into an art gallery and added an adjoining restaurant. The gallery opened in 2013.
The 1805 building replaced an earlier one that stood to the north-east and was still extant in 1875. Both are assumed to have been put up by the Board of Ordnance, possibly for issuing gunpowder on the occasions of drill and reviews in Hyde Park. The magazine stayed in military use as workshops and stores until 1963, when it passed to the Ministry of Public Building and Works. The conversion into an art gallery began in 2010. Serpentine North and the South Gallery together make up the Serpentine Galleries.
Keeping the projects distinct
The building was known as the Serpentine Sackler Gallery before its 2021 renaming. The Magazine now refers specifically to the restaurant extension. Distinguishing the historic building, the conversion and the addition is essential to describing the project accurately. They belong to different moments in its history.
The gallery opened in 2013 as the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, following a £5.5m donation from a foundation run by Theresa and Mortimer Sackler. Members of the Sackler family owned Purdue Pharma, maker of the painkiller OxyContin, and campaigns by victims of the opioid epidemic reversed the earlier trend of museums naming buildings after the family. At the site, the artist Hito Steyerl opened an exhibition publicly denouncing the Sacklers. The gallery then stated that donations from the Sackler Trust were historic and that it had no future plans to accept funding from the Sacklers. The 2021 renaming to Serpentine North was announced in spring of that year, but the sign at the front still displayed the Sackler name until 2022.
What to study
Study the project as an encounter between an inherited structure and a new architectural intervention. Begin with what the conversion preserves, then examine where the extension meets it and how visitors pass between uses. This makes the relationship between old and new a concrete spatial question. It also prevents the gallery from being confused with the Serpentine’s separate pavilion programme.
