LONDON.- The Serpentine Gallery announced that the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009 will be designed by architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, of the leading Japanese practice SANAA. Sejima and Nishizawa’s Pavilion will be the architects’ first built structure in the UK and the ninth commission in the Gallery’s annual series of Pavilions, the world’s first and most ambitious architectural programme of its kind. The Pavilion will open in July on the Serpentine Gallery’s lawn, where it will remain until October.

Sejima and Nishizawa’ s pioneering buildings have created an architecture that marries aesthetic simplicity with technical complexity, defining a new architectural language, which plays with light and perception. Sought after by high-profile clients the world over, from the Louvre Museum in Lens, France to the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, USA, SANAA’s projects are open stages which make visible the connection between the built structure, the users and the natural environment.

Sejima, who in her early days studied at the Japan Women's University and worked with architect Toyo Ito, designer of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in 2002, began collaborating with Nishizawa in 1995. Sejima and Nishizawa’s Pavilion will operate as a café and as a venue for the Gallery’s acclaimed programme of public talks and events, Park Nights, attracting up to 250,000 visitors every summer. Sejima and Nishizawa will work with the structural design and engineering firm SAPS, led by Mutsuro Sasaki, and with the Arup team, led by David Glover and Ed Clark with Cecil Balmond, to realise this project.

Julia Peyton-Jones, Director, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Serpentine Gallery, said: “It is our dream come true to be working with world-leading architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA. Their work will be a wonderful addition to the Pavilion series, the only commission of its kind worldwide that annually gives preeminent architects their debut in this country and brings the best of contemporary architecture to London for everyone to enjoy.”

There is no budget for the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commission. It is paid for by sponsorship, sponsorship help-in-kind, and the sale of the finished structure, which does not cover more than 40% of its cost. The Serpentine Gallery collaborates with a range of companies and individuals whose support makes it possible to realise the Pavilion.