Daniel Libeskind's striking design for the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2001 was entitled Eighteen Turns.

Highlighting the beauty of Kensington Gardens and their connection to the gallery, Daniel Libeskind's striking design for the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2001, entitled Eighteen Turns, was created from sheer metallic planes assembled in a dynamic sequence. Clad in aluminium panels creating brilliant reflections of light, the structure revealed an entirely new perspective of the greenery of the park and the brick building of the gallery. Eighteen Turns was a special place of discovery, intimacy and gathering.

'Temporary structures like Eighteen Turns are great additions to our parks and cityscapes; they can offer us adventurous, alternative and even radical impressions of what a new architecture might be.'

The Guardian

‘Eighteen Turns’, designed in collaboration with Daniel Libeskind in 2001, is the first Serpentine Pavilion that Balmond engaged with. Informed by their spiral proposal for the V&A, they chose a horizontal, coiling orbit for its design.

Featuring steep inclines combined with intersecting planes, Balmond augmented the cascade effect of the planes by splaying the supporting members in elevation and using a sharp zigzag line for bracing. This line shot through the form like lightning, heightening the effect of the tilting facets. As the walls turned, large as well as narrow openings appeared. The Pavilion was open to all sides. More than enclosure, it offered passage and felt truly temporary as if made in passing, a transit for the twelve weeks of summer.

Also in exchange were the traditional conventions of architecture and engineering. In this Pavilion, as in the others since created by Balmond, the structure that is the architecture, is the form; a transmigration the public has come to expect and enjoy.