London’s Kensington Gardens are currently enjoying an extraordinary pavilion in the park: a tension-filled sculpture, free of the usual constraints, and placed in stark and yet harmonious contrast with the traditional Serpentine Gallery building. This is the third year in succession that the gallery has commissioned a star architect to build a modern summer pavilion outside the gallery. It was Toyo Ito’s turn this year, after Zaha Hadid (2000) and Daniel Libeskind (2001), whose Eighteen Turns was listed by the London Observer as one of the top ten buildings of 2001. Toyo Ito‘s ground-breaking ideas about the form and function of contemporary buildings have secured him a place in the vanguard of world architecture. His temporary structure houses a café during the day, then various events in the evening, ranging from film screenings via readings and discussions to company events. This extremely complex steel, glass and aluminium structure was created in a very short planning and construction period, in close co-operation with the engineers. A version in aluminium and plastic was rejected as insufficiently filigree at an early stage. The facades and roof of the pavilion are covered with countless overlapping steel flats 12–50 mm thick, based on a strict mathematical pattern. This produces a multiplicity of triangles and trapezoids, filled in with a total of 380 different glass and aluminium panels. The 55 cm construction height makes the roof and facades three-dimensional and gives them a sculptural quality. The facade structures were prefabricated as single elements in each case, and then transported to the site. The ceiling’s multiple, intricate components were assembled on site. One large field is simply left open on each side of the pavilion for access and ventilation. This means that there is nothing to break up the facades and they are free to develop their full expressive effect.