LANZA atelier to Design the 25th Serpentine Pavilion

The Mexico City-based studio founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo has been selected to design the Serpentine Pavilion 2026, marking the 25th edition of one of the world’s most influential architectural commissions.

The Serpentine Pavilion has, for a quarter of a century, functioned as more than a temporary structure. It has been a laboratory of ideas, a civic room without walls, and a global stage for architectural experimentation. For its landmark 25th edition, Serpentine has announced Mexican architecture studio LANZA atelier, founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, as the designers of the 2026 Pavilion. Titled “A serpentine”, the Pavilion will open to the public on 6 June 2026 at Serpentine South, supported by Goldman Sachs for the twelfth consecutive year .

Rooted in everyday practices, informal architectures, and collective ways of building, LANZA atelier’s work locates beauty in assembly, use, and encounter. Their Pavilion proposal reflects this ethos, offering not a monument, but a porous spatial device that blurs the boundaries between enclosure and openness, architecture and landscape, movement and pause.

A Wall That Curves, Holds, and Reveals

The central architectural gesture of “a serpentine” draws inspiration from the English “crinkle-crankle wall”, a sinuous brick structure known for its alternating curves. This form, which originated in ancient Egypt and was later introduced to England by Dutch engineers, achieves stability through its geometry rather than thickness, allowing a one-brick-wide wall to stand firm while using fewer materials than a straight wall .

This curving wall does more than structure the Pavilion. It subtly references the nearby Serpentine lake, named for its own gentle bends, while evoking the figure of the serpent as both a generative and protective force. In LANZA atelier’s hands, the wall becomes a spatial instrument—shaping movement, framing thresholds, and orchestrating moments of proximity and retreat.

The Pavilion’s configuration places the main structure on the northern side of the site, while a second wall works in dialogue with the surrounding tree canopy, preserving rather than disrupting it. Above, a translucent roof rests lightly on brick columns, evoking a grove of trees and allowing light and air to permeate the space. The result is neither fully inside nor outside—a condition that softens architectural boundaries and encourages informal inhabitation.

Brick as Cultural Bridge

Brick, chosen as the Pavilion’s primary material, anchors the project in England’s garden traditions while also resonating with LANZA atelier’s interest in vernacular craft and material intelligence. The Pavilion’s rhythmic repetition of brick columns allows the walls to shift from opaque to permeable, creating a dynamic spatial gradient rather than a fixed enclosure.This material choice also establishes a conversation with the brick façade of the Serpentine South Gallery, which itself was once a tea pavilion. In this way, “a serpentine” becomes a subtle architectural bridge, not only between past and present, but between geographies, linking Europe and the Americas through a shared material language .

LANZA atelier describe their Pavilion as a structure that both reveals and withholds. “Set within a garden, an evocation of the natural world, the project takes the form of a serpentine wall, conceived as a device that both reveals and withholds: shaping movement, modulating rhythm, and framing thresholds of proximity, orientation, and pause,” they explain.

Their approach draws on England’s historic fruit walls—structures designed to temper climate, create shelter, and enable growth. From this lineage emerges a Pavilion built of simple clay brick, foregrounding the elemental capacity of architecture to bring people together.

A Platform for Public Life

Since its inception in 2000 with Zaha Hadid’s inaugural Pavilion, the Serpentine commission has served as a platform for architects at pivotal moments in their careers. It has introduced London audiences to first UK structures by figures who would later become globally influential, while increasingly foregrounding emerging voices and experimental practices.

Bettina Korek, Chief Executive of Serpentine, situates the Pavilion as a civic structure in the fullest sense: “For 25 years, the Serpentine Pavilion has been a leading global platform for architectural experimentation… Conceived as a structure that extends beyond its walls, the Pavilion connects architecture, landscape, and people”.

She emphasises that LANZA atelier’s appointment strengthens cultural exchange with Mexico and reaffirms the Pavilion’s role as a free, public space at the heart of Serpentine’s summer and autumn programmes.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of Serpentine, highlights the Pavilion’s increasing focus on younger practices and its commitment to experimentation. He describes LANZA atelier’s work as deeply engaged with local context, material intelligence, and lived experience, adding that their spaces invite people to imagine a more connected, compassionate, and creative future.

Importantly, LANZA atelier’s Pavilion will mark only the second time Mexican architects have been commissioned, following Frida Escobedo’s 2018 Pavilion, an appointment that subtly underscores the growing presence of Latin American practices in global architectural discourse.

Architecture as a Living Programme

Like its predecessors, the Serpentine Pavilion 2026 will not be a static object. From June through October, it will function as a stage for Serpentine’s live programme, hosting events across music, film, theatre, dance, literature, philosophy, fashion, and technology. Each year’s Pavilion becomes a content machine, generating not only spatial experiences but cultural conversations.

In 2026, this programme will be especially significant, as Serpentine collaborates with the “Zaha Hadid Foundation” to commemorate Hadid’s legacy and the Pavilion’s 25th anniversary. A dedicated architectural programme will explore her groundbreaking contributions while fostering transgenerational and transnational dialogue about the future of the discipline.

This reflective moment situates *a serpentine* not only as a Pavilion of the present, but as one shaped by memory, lineage, and future imaginaries.