The Serpentine Gallery's summer pavilion is now in its 14th year. I was starting to think the formula was getting tired - until I saw this year's creation by Chile's Smiljan Radic. It's a giant button mushroom with a cave-like interior, and it rests on boulders imported all the way from Yorkshire. Inside, it's hollowed like a donut, has timber decking, and crooked apertures that bring the outdoors in.
| The pavilion has a papier mache feel to it, even though it's glass reinforced plastic. Radic (seated left of Julia Peyton-Jones) said he wanted to give it the look of the masking-tape models he had in his studio. He said he'd never seen past pavilions, so that gave him more freedom with this one. |  |
 I'm glad the Serpentine had the imagination to call on Radic instead of recruiting another starchitect (most of them have done a pavilion, anyway). Apparently his name was suggested by Kazuyo Seijima of SANAA, co-designer of the 2009 pavilion. To my amazement, the 2014 pavilion is among the ones I've liked most, along with SANAA's, Peter Zumthor's (2011), and Frank Gehry's (2008). You have until October 19 to see it. (Photographs by Farah Nayeri.) | Here's what his pavilion looks like from the other side. You can see a section of the railing that reaches inside it. And unusually, you can easily walk underneath this pavilion. |
