Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron, the superstar duo (or trio, depending on how you count) who brought the world the award-winning and iconic “Bird’s Nest” stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, have another collaboration for us to look forward to: the Serpentine Gallery has just announced the Chinese artist and the Swiss architectural firm will work together to create this year’s "Serpentine Pavilion," the annual work of temporary architecture erected on the lawn of West London's Kensington Gardens. Whatever architectural feats can be expected from the team-up, the choice seems custom engineered to be read as a political statement.

This pop-up structure will take place from June through October, making it coincide with the London Olympics, which are sure to be compared to their spectacular Beijing predecesor in every way. Ai very publicly dissassociated himself from the "Bird's Nest" in the lead-up to the Beijing games, decrying the human rights situation in China. It was, arguably, the beginning of the chain of events that led to his two-month-long detention last year, making him an international symbol of the fight for freedom of speech, and sparking a united chorus of protest from the art world. 

As Ai is still forbidden from leaving China, the team have reportedly been collaborating over Skype. However, they do seem to have cooked up something pretty interesting.

Rather than building the pavilion on the lawn, as starchitects Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, and Daniel Libeskind have done in years past, they plan to excavate and build the pavilion beneath the lawn. While images of the design have not yet been released, the gist of it, according to a statement released today, is that visitors enter by ducking beneath a five-foot-high, rain-collecting disc that gathers the copious London rainfall and reflects the sky above. They descend a set of steps to go five feet beneath the ground, where load-bearing columns pay tribute to the past 11 pavilions, plus a “wild card” column representing their own contribution that can be moved anywhere. As an added bonus, the roof water can be drained to turn it into a dry dance floor or platform suspended above the park for special events.

The approach seems to be a statement about reflecting on the past. "As we dig down into the earth we encounter a diversity of constructed realities such as telephone cables and former foundations. Like a team of archaeologists, we identify these physical fragments as remains of the eleven Pavilions built between 2000 and 2011," the trio said in a statement. 

Alongside the Pavilion this summer, the Serpentine Gallery will host a major exhibition of the work of Yoko Ono.