An otherworldly structure will touch down on the grounds of Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens this summer. Chilean architect Smiljan Radic is the fourteenth architect to design
a temporary summer pavilion for the gallery, which will host a series
of parties and events inside the building throughout the season.
Resembling an enormous shell or an oversized skipping stone balanced on
boulders, the design has drawn comparisons to everything from a product
of a pagan civilization to an alien spaceship. th Century to the start of the 19th.” We call it awesome. The design comes after Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto’s popular
pavilion of last summer, which with its crisscrossed white rods
resembled a cloud and received almost 200,000 visitors in 2013. In past
years, the space has featured pavilions designed by architects including
Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel.“Externally, the visitor will see a fragile shell suspended on large
quarry stones,” Mr. Radic said of the design. “This shell, white,
translucent and made of fiberglass, will house an interior
organized
around an empty patio, from where the natural setting will appear lower,
giving the sensation that the entire volume is floating. Mr. Radic, who lives and works in Chile, said the structure’s draw
will only increase after sunset. “At night, thanks to the
semi-transparency of the shell, the amber tinted light will attract the
attention of passers-by like lamps attracting moths.”
Mr. Radic, 48, called the design “part of the history of small
romantic constructions seen in parks or large gardens, the so-called
follies, which were hugely popular from the end of the 16
