This must be the smallest building that Frank Gehryhas designed in decades. But his summer pavilion for the SerpentineGallery {the eighth to be built in the Kensington Gardens in Londonsince 2000 and sponsored this year by NetJets and Tiffany &Company} is still a big deal. From a distance, the pavilion — with itsmassive, steel-reinforced Douglas fir columns and beams and its roof ofangled, suspended glass planes — looks like an explosion in anarchitecture factory.Up close, of course, it’s a different story. The structure’sexpansive interior is classic Gehry: muscular but friendly. Under thebutterflylike roof panels {suggested by the architect’s son Samuel, whoworked with him on the project}, a wide aisle — Gehry calls it a street— is flanked by stadium seating for the coffee kiosk next door and forlectures, films and concerts. {Every pavilion architect participates inits programming, and Gehry, a classical-music fan, invited the composerThomas Adès to perform there.} The hulking timbers were inspired by bridge designs from the ancient Romans and Leonardo da Vinciand illustrate Gehry’s obsession with “big wood.” The “street” frames aview of the gallery, a diminutive neo-Classical-style building thatnone of the previous architects ever really addressed. “You could’vepredicted that,” Gehry says of his own approach. “That’s how I think about things.” Comparedwith its predecessors, this pavilion looks almost primitive. Gehrycalls it a reaction to the computer-designed buildings that are soprevalent today. Of course this seemingly casual pileup required theengineering expertise of the firm
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