Today sees the public opening of the Serpentine Galleries’ 16th annual Summer Pavilion, designed by Bjarke Ingels, of the Copenhagen and New York-based Bjarke Ingels Group. This year, the Pavilion is accompanied by four Summer Houses, commissioned as responses to the nearby Queen Caroline’s Temple, a classical-style summer house built in 1734.

Of this year’s Pavilion, Ingels says, ‘we have attempted to design a structure that embodies multiple aspects that are often perceived as opposites: a structure that is free-form yet rigorous; modular yet sculptural; both transparent and opaque; both solid box and blob’. The structure – resembling an unzipped wall – is created from overlapping fibreglass boxes, with the light filtering in to create a cavernous, playful space.

Curator Amira Gad will lead a tour of the Serpentine Pavilion on Saturday 11th June at 3pm to introduce the structure and the rest of the 2016 Serpentine Architecture Programme.