Danish artist Olafur Ellison and Norwegian architect Kjetil Thorsen have teamed up to design this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, an annual temporary building that opens Friday in London’s Kensington Gardens and will host a full schedule of art, design and architecture events through November.
The steel-frame structure, which is clad inside and out with plywood, is drawing rave reviews for its mind-bogglingly complex geometries. From the tilted cone viewing deck to its inverted lower half, the building resembles a spinning top and is wrapped by a ramp that makes it’s way twice around the 50-foot building, snaking through the interior and exterior on the way up. Once inside, the interior opens up to reveal a deceptively large area with constantly shifting perspectives, polygonal columns and raked, parliamentary style seating.
The Pavillion may be one of the coolest temporary sites ever built, and is well worth a visit for talks, exhibitions and “experiments” that will include artists, architects and scientists, culminating in November with a 48-hour marathon laboratory event exploring the architecture of the senses.
