It’s another typical 2016 summer day in London – threatening grey skies and clouds which soon release waterfalls of water over the tourists and visitors to the museums and galleries. Umbrella-makers must have made a fortune this year!

Is the Victoria & Albert Museum competing with the Serpentine Gallery for the best 2016 summer pavilion?   The Serpentine’s pavilion is a soaring cathedral-like structure, designed by BIG, but open to the rain while the Victoria & Albert Museum’s canopy by architects and engineers at the University of Stuttgart is inspired by the forewing shells of flying beetles known as elytra and constructed using a robotic production process.  Not only does it provide shelter against the British weather, it grows and changes as the robot continues to work over the summer.  

Part of the V&A’s Engineering Season,, the Elytra Filament Pavilion follows the ideals of Ove Arup, who is the subject of a parallel exhibition in the Museum, by integrating architecture, engineering and natural biological structures.

The pavilion’s canopy of 40 hexagonal cells was constructed by a robot at the University of Stuttgart and assembled on site at the Museum. It will then grow and change over the summer in response to data captured by real-time sensors of how visitors use, shelter from the rain, and move under the canopy with new components fabricated on site by the Kuka Robot.