22.9.2025 Monday - Artplay Pavillion by Carmody Groarke

Pavilions are all too often fleeting experiments or forgotten, peeling structures in parks. However, Carmody Groarke’s new ArtPlay Pavilion for under-8's at Dulwich Picture Gallery is more substantial.

It blends the technical and environmental rigour of a building with the outdoor affinity of a kiosk. It’s a permanent addition that takes fun seriously.

Designed by Sir John Soane in 1851, Dulwich Picture Gallery sits within a 1.2ha site in leafy south London. It was England’s first purpose-built public art gallery and boasts an impressive, largely historic, collection.

Although the Grade II*-listed building was extended by Rick Mather Architects in 2000, the gallery needed increasing facilities for kids, school groups and exhibiting artists. With local planning stringent, it was the landscape itself which had to step up. A series of temporary summer pavilions – by IF_DO in 2017 and by Pricegore in 2019 – activated the underutilised gardens and showed visitors’ appetite for engaging, outdoor forms.

‘There’s no front or back to this building’

Carmody Groarke was appointed in 2022 to deliver a space in collaboration with play designers HoLD Collective and renovate the Gallery Cottage into a flexible canteen. The project is part of a wider landscape scheme which has created a new west entrance and transformed a hedged off area to the south into an open sculpture meadow – with the pavilion carefully positioned to aid navigation. “The pavilion is at hinge point between one half of the park and the other. It welcomes you in, then bounces you on,” says practice director Andy Groarke.

All four Douglas fir-clad facades attend to visitors, beckoning them through the landscape with large circular windows, exaggerated canopies and a light tone. “There’s no front or back to this building – it’s all front,” stresses Groarke.

Its perimeter offers practical spaces for parking buggies or sheltering from the rain. But there are also shaded spots for sitting, sketching and enjoying the landscape in warmer months.

8.2m x 3.6m canopies create sheltered outdoor spaces.

An inverted ziggurat form breaks down overall scale. 

(very slight) inverted ziggurat form helps to breaks down overall scale 

Although the pavilion has a square plan, it is far from ‘boxy’. Bands of 80mm-wide timber gradually step in and shorten, the facade diminishing as it descends. Before being painted, timbers were machine sanded to heighten the texture of the grain. Folded steel canopies project outwards, each fragmented into eleven strips with raised seams and visibly supported by props underneath.

The ‘bittyness’ is designed to feel less imposing for younger visitors, and offers clues about the materials and how they have been used. It also provides visual interest, drawing on the animated brickwork of Soane’s facades, which undulate with arches and pilasters.

The building's frame is built entirely from timber

the corner boxes are as much a technical necessity as they are a spatial device, concealing an energy centre, external WCs, internal WCs and lobby.

The scale of the interior is also broken down. Corner boxes create a cruciform plan with delineated pockets of play. This allows for a variation of spaces, where kids can crawl across, slide down or swing through masterpieces from the collection. However, informal thresholds mean that children can move fluidly between the sections, taking toys with them, and be easily seen by parents.

Carving out well-ventilated spaces for rest – and play

The corner boxes themselves have been well-excavated. “We had to try and eke out as much space as possible for play,” says project architect Chiara Barrett. Wherever possible, Carmody Groarke carved out arches, nooks and crawl spaces, providing small but important places to rest or sit.

But behind the charming illustrations of van Ruisdael’s windmill and Poussin’s clouds, the corner boxes are hard at work. They are as much a technical necessity as they are a spatial device, concealing an energy centre, external WCs, internal WCs and lobby.

In the energy centre, a new ground-source heat pump services the pavilion, canteen and existing gallery. The box also hosts a natural ventilation system, which monitors temperature and CO2 levels in the space and opens flaps in the facade if needed. During my visit, despite the energetic play inside, I don’t catch them opening. The large canopies, which reduce solar gain, and the 350mm of insulation in the wall buildup are clearly performing well.

The Gallery Cottage, formerly used for storage, is now a canteen for schools and family café. 

Real care and dedication has been taken to decarbonise the existing site and ensure new elements are low-impact. This is perhaps best expressed in the pavilion’s roof structure which employs a reciprocal grid system to allow for shorter, natural and UK-sourced timbers to be used. 

Nearby, the converted Gallery Cottage has been extended with an understated copper-clad volume. It is now both a canteen for school groups and a family café – and is already well used.

Speaking to museum staff, it’s clear that having a covered lunch spot for schools can be the difference between whether classes visit or not. It may be less spectacular than the ArtPlay Pavilion, but it serves a crucial purpose – with some primrose yellow fabric canopies to follow.

Despite the pavilion’s sophistication, it’s commendably self-effacing. It settles into the landscape and recedes behind HoLD Collective’s fantastical furnishings, foregrounding site and play rather than jostling for acclaim.

Kids can have fun in a space which is light, unimposing, a comfortable temperature and is well-serviced by toilets and a café. It’s integral to the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s entire scheme – yet a committed team player.