The Serpentine Pavilion 2026, titled a serpentine, turns an apparently modest device—the crinkle-crankle wall—into a remarkably sophisticated architectural argument. Designed by Mexico City–based LANZA atelier, founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, the pavilion will open at Serpentine South in London on June 6, 2026 and remain on view until October 25. Its point of departure is the English serpentine wall: a one-brick-wide wall whose undulating geometry gives it lateral stability while using fewer bricks than a straight wall. LANZA’s decision is intellectually elegant, because the project borrows not only the wall’s form but also its logic of economy, strength, and movement. (d37zoqglehb9o7.cloudfront.net)

What makes the design especially compelling is the way it reinterprets vernacular architecture without lapsing into nostalgia. Brick was chosen to evoke the English garden tradition and to converse with the brick façade of Serpentine South, itself once a tea pavilion. Yet this is not a historical replica. The pavilion transforms brick into a porous, contemporary spatial instrument: rhythmic columns modulate the wall from solid to permeable, a translucent roof rests lightly above them like a canopy, and light and air circulate freely through the structure. In this sense, vernacular building is treated not as a museum artifact but as a living reservoir of spatial intelligence—practical, climate-aware, and socially generative. (d37zoqglehb9o7.cloudfront.net)

LANZA also enriches the project with symbolic resonance. The architects link the serpentine wall to the figure of the serpent as a protective and generative force, and to England’s fruit walls, which historically created shelter and enabled growth. That metaphor helps explain why the pavilion seems less like an object placed in a park than a gentle choreography of thresholds, pauses, and encounters. As Serpentine marks the pavilion programme’s 25th edition—celebrated in 2026 with a partnership with the Zaha Hadid Foundation—the commission feels appropriately reflective and forward-looking at once. LANZA, only the second Mexican practice to receive the commission after Frida Escobedo in 2018, offers a pavilion that is at once materially humble and conceptually expansive: an essay in how local building traditions can be translated into a contemporary civic space. (d37zoqglehb9o7.cloudfront.net)