Serpentine Pavilion 2026 by LANZA Atelier – Photos by Iwan Baan, © LANZA Atelier, unless stated. Courtesy of Serpentine.

Architecture. There’s something wonderfully fitting about a pavilion named A Serpentine taking shape in the heart of Kensington Gardens. This summer, LANZA Atelier — the Mexico City studio making serious waves in contemporary architecture — will bring its vision to London with the Serpentine Pavilion 2026, opening its doors to the public on 6th June.

• RELATED STORIES: Find out more about the Serpentine Pavilion on Archipanic.

Founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, LANZA Atelier has drawn on one of history’s most quietly clever structural ideas: the serpentine wall. Ancient in origin and deeply woven into English gardens, this sinuous brick facade achieves structural strength not through mass, but through curve — a lesson in doing more with less. “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,” the duo explain.

But the thinking runs deeper than structural elegance. The studio draws a direct line between the serpent as symbol — generative, protective, alive — and England’s historic winding fruit walls. The result is a pavilion of simple clay brick, warm and grounded, that champions vernacular craft.

“From this idea emerges a pavilion built of simple clay brick, foregrounding vernacular craft and the elemental capacity of architecture to bring people together. The Serpentine Pavilion 2026 proposes built forms that are permeable, shaped and held by a gentle geometry, and continually responsive to those who move through it.”

Overhead, a translucent roof drifts lightly across the brick columns like a canopy of trees in late-afternoon light. The pavilion breathes — air and light moving freely through it, the line between inside and outside, nature and architecture, pleasantly and deliberately blurred.

The Serpentine commission arrives at a landmark moment: 25 years since Dame Zaha Hadid inaugurated the programme in 2000. A special partnership with the Zaha Hadid Foundation honours that legacy, while Goldman Sachs continues its valued support of the series.

Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo of LANZA atelier – ©Pia Riverola.

Until October 25, the Serpentine Pavilion 2026 becomes a living stage — host to Serpentine’s acclaimed events programme spanning music, film, theatre, dance, literature, philosophy, fashion, and technology. Each year, the commission shapes not just a structure but an experience, and this one promises to be every bit as generous and alive as the geometry it’s built from.

Serpentine Pavilion 2026 – © LANZA atelier, courtesy of the Serpentine commission.