Fed up perhaps with all the artsy airs that architects sometimes take on, the Serpentine Gallery in London has this year decided to assign its summer pavilion directly to a conceptual artist. Eclectically trained in urban planning and ceramics through a double major at university, the Chicago-born Theaster Gates is the author – with the collaboration of Adjaye Associates – of a tempietto of jet black wood that is superloaded with references, from the circular floor that evokes the dancing-in-rings of African slaves or the building system that honors his father’s craft as a roofer, to the bronze bell salvaged from a demolished church and placed right next to the entrance as a redundant reminder to visitors – as if the grave forms were not sufficient – that they are stepping into a place of meditation or worship.[+]