Timber design for Serpentine Pavilion

Designs for the 2007 Serpentine Gallery temporary Pavilion were unveiled today. The timber-clad building has been designed by Norwegian architect Kjetil Thorsen and Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson.

They said in a joint statement: “Our collaboration on the Serpentine Pavilion 2007 is defined by our mutual focus on the experience of space and on temporality as a constitutive element of spaces, private or public. We both work within a field of spatial experimentation that renders conceptual differences between art and architecture superfluous.”

Thorsen is the co-founder of Oslo-based practice Snøhetta. He has designed such buildings as the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt and the Oslo National Opera House. Eliasson is best known for his Weather Project installation in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, a gigantic orange sun reflected in a mirrored ceiling.

Arup will assist in the structural engineering and design of the project, and Stanhope will act as advisors. The project has received sponsorship from contractors Bovis Lend Lease, Keltbray, T Clarke, John Doyle and Siteco; and surveyors Davis Langdon.

Every year, the Serpentine invites an internationally-acclaimed architect who has not had a building constructed in the UK to design a temporary pavilion for the gallery. Thorsen and Eliasson’s commission is the eighth. Previous Pavilion architects include Zaha Hadid (2000), Daniel Libeskind (2001) and Oscar Niemeyer (2003).