© Iwan Baan

Watch the inside of Sepentine Pavilion

A collision between an extraterrestial egg and a Neolithic burial site. Matt Gibberd gives his verdict on this year's Serpentine pavilion

Ah, Kensington Gardens. Boating on the lake... the tremulous trill of birdsong... Prince Albert glinting in the sunshine beneath his gothic revival ciborium. Hang on a minute, what the hell is that? An alien spacecraft appears to have crashed into Stonehenge. This, of course, is the Serpentine Gallery’s latest pavilion project, and it’s certainly an arresting sight. On a recent visit, bemused tourists could be witnessed staggering around scratching their heads, wondering quite what to make of it.

The architect behind the 14th Serpentine pavilion is Smiljan Radic who has carried out the majority of his work in Chile. The chances are you haven’t heard of him, but he’s certainly in esteemed company – the likes of Herzog & de Meuron, Peter Zumthor, Frank Gehry, Oscar Niemeyer, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid have all designed pavilions in the past. “We have been intrigued by his work ever since our first encounter with him at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2011,” say Serpentine directors Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist. “Radic is a key protagonist of an amazing architectural explosion in Chile.”