Geometrical games combined with an inventive approach to structure and materials inspire this eccentric temporary tea house in Hyde Park - Delight - Brief Article - Critical Essay

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 2002 by Catherine Slessor

The annual erection of a pavilion next to the Serpentine Gallery has become something of a social and architectural fixture in the London summer season. Emerging from the green boskiness of Hyde Park, these compact, temporary structures have the charm and intrigue of avant-garde follies and give superstar designers a chance to indulge in a little light five-finger exercise. Following Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind in previous years, the Japanese architect Toyo Ito was invited to seduce and surprise unsuspecting park goers.

Designed in collaboration with Arup uber-engineer Cecil Balmond, the guru of fractals. Ito's apparently simple box-like structure is enclosed by a crazy-paving skin of metal and glass, so that from a distance the pavilion resembles a giant fragment of ripped lace or a superscale cobweb. The apparently random intersections of lines to create a lattice of triangles and trapezoids are actually derived from a complex mathematical model -- an algorithm of a cube expanding as it rotates. Flat steel members were welded together off-site to form individual sections that were then bolted into place as components in a huge and elaborate mosaic.

The resulting 'look-no-hands' soap-bubble structure of continuous roof and wall planes exudes both effortless ingenuity and surprising delicacy. Daylight percolates through a myriad of glazed openings, bathing the interior in a soft luminance and changing Cubist pattern of shadows. Inside this fusion of Japanese abstraction and English eccentricity you can take tea and contemplate views of the park, framed and redefined by Ito's hectic geometry. Sadly, like its predecessors, the pavilion will be dismantled once summer draws to a close, but like some exotic short-lived insect, its startling presence compensates for the brevity of its existence.