NEW DETAILS FOR 2026 SERPENTINE PAVILION DESIGNED BY LANZA ATELIER

The 2026 Serpentine Pavilion designed by Mexican architecture studio LANZA atelier, founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo opens on 6 June 2026. Goldman Sachs will support the annual project for the 12th consecutive year.

As the Pavilion reaches its 25th edition, Serpentine will celebrate this landmark anniversary and the legacy of inaugural Pavilion architect, Zaha Hadid, through a special collaboration with the Zaha Hadid Foundation and the Architectural Association.

Throughout its history, the Serpentine Pavilion has grown into a highly anticipated showcase for emerging talents. The Pavilion has evolved over the years as a participatory public and artistic platform for Serpentine’s experimental, interdisciplinary, community and education programmes.

LANZA atelier, founded in 2015 by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, is a Mexico City-based architecture studio. Their collaborative practice reinterprets familiar materials and forms by paying close attention to craftmanship, technology and spatial design traditions. Their work proposes ways of building that foreground dialogue and collective experience.

The duo places particular emphasis on hands-on design methods such as drawing and model-making, treating them as active tools for thinking through material, form, and structure. Working globally, the studio understands architectural practice as one that moves fluidly across cultural spaces, residential projects, public infrastructure, and furniture design, through a critical and engaged perspective.

For this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, LANZA atelier took its inspiration from the architecture feature known as a serpentine or crinkle-crankle wall which forms one side of the pavilion. This type of brick wall, composed of alternating curves, is commonly found in the English county Suffolk but originates in ancient Egypt and was later introduced to England by Dutch engineers. Its curvilinear form provides stability through lateral support, meaning the one-brick-wide serpentine wall requires fewer bricks than a straight wall. The eponymous feature also subtly nods to the nearby Serpentine lake, named for its gentle curvature, evoking the form of a serpent.

In dialogue with the surrounding landscape, a second wall works in harmony with the tree canopy without disrupting it, while the main structure is positioned on the Northern side of the site. A translucent roof rests lightly on brick columns evoking a grove of trees. The pavilion’s configuration allows light and air to permeate the space, softening the boundary between enclosure and openness.

LANZA atelier chose brick as the primary material to celebrate the English garden tradition and establish a conversation with the existing brick façade of the Serpentine South Gallery, once a tea pavilion itself. Constructed from a rhythmic repetition of brick columns that transform the wall from opaque to permeable, the Pavilion challenges the idea of walls as features of division and instead invites connection as it allows visitors to see through.

LANZA also designed the chairs and stools for the pavilion, continuing their practice of viewing furniture and architecture as part of the same design process but at different scales. Constructed from sapele hardwood, the chairs and stools are made locally.

LANZA atelier said: “It is an honour to be selected as the architects of the 25th Serpentine Pavilion, a milestone year for the commission. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to share our work with a wider public and to contribute to the Pavilion’s ongoing legacy of spatial experimentation and collective encounter. 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.

Inspired by the figure of the serpent as a generative and protective force, we draw a parallel with England’s winding fruit walls, which are structures that temper climate, create shelter, and enable growth. 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 2026 Pavilion proposes built forms that are permeable, shaped and held by a gentle geometry, and continually responsive to those who move through it.”

Bettina Korek, Chief Executive, Serpentine said: “For 25 years, the Serpentine Pavilion has offered something rare, a space where architecture, art and everyday life meet, free and open in the heart of Hyde Park. Each commission is an invitation to test ambitious ideas in one of the world’s great public spaces. With LANZA atelier, we deepen our cultural exchange with Mexico and reaffirm what the Pavilion has always been: a place of connection. We are deeply grateful to our partners and supporters for making it possible.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine said: “Over the last 10 years the Serpentine Pavilion has increasingly focussed on giving opportunities to younger architectural practices. We are excited that Mexican architects LANZA atelier will design the 2026 Serpentine Pavilion. LANZA atelier’s architecture always involves a deep engagement with the local context, materials and lived experience. In their own words, they create contemporary spaces whose energy can last. Their spaces invite people to imagine a more connected, compassionate and creative future. As always, the Pavilion will be a content machine with lectures, film screenings and performances. We will also remember Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) who gave us our motto that “there should be no end to experimentation”. As we mark the 25th Pavilion, we reflect on these origins. Since its inception in 2000, the Pavilion has acted as a catalyst for architects at pivotal moments in their careers. LANZA atelier’s Pavilion will mark the second time Mexican architects are appointed since Frida Escobedo in 2018. We are grateful to LANZA atelier for embracing this invitation, and we extend our sincere thanks to Sou Fujimoto for his generous guidance.”

Anthony Gutman and Kunal Shah, Co-CEOs, Goldman Sachs International said: “For the twelfth consecutive year, Goldman Sachs is proud to support the Serpentine Pavilion commission – a singular platform for architectural experimentation and public encounter in the heart of London. LANZA atelier’s a serpentine creates a welcoming civic space for conversation, reflection and community. We are grateful to the Serpentine team and all our partners for bringing this remarkable project to life and keeping it free and open to all.”

Jon Leach, Director, AECOM said: “At AECOM, we are delighted to be serving as technical advisor on what will be our thirteenth consecutive Serpentine Pavilion, continuing this longstanding collaboration. The Pavilion is a uniquely ambitious platform that brings together visionary architects, innovative engineering and complex delivery within a condensed timeframe. This year’s design by LANZA combines traditional materials and structural forms with a unique opportunity for experimentation, creating an inspiring and engaging space inside a fully demountable structure that ensures a sustainable legacy beyond its first life at Serpentine.”

Tim Leigh, Chief Creative Officer, Stage One Creative Services said: “Each year our role is to take the architect’s design intent and render this faithfully in physical form. This year feels particularly innovative in that we have had to develop methods for standard materials to be used in novel ways. This nod to experimental architecture underscores the very essence of what a perfect Serpentine Pavilion should be.

In the creative world collaboration is a much-overused device. However, there is no better testament to working together than the coordinated effort between LANZA atelier, Serpentine, AECOM and Stage One to deliver this scheme in such short order. The entire workflow is completed within a six-month window, with the build on site taking just forty days.

This is the seventeenth Serpentine Pavilion that Stage One has delivered. The project sets the rhythm of our year and is consistently one of our most enjoyable commissions. We are delighted to be able to add LANZA atelier’s a serpentine to our portfolio of Pavilions.”

Throughout the Summer and until October, the Serpentine Pavilion 2026 will become a platform for Serpentine’s live and events programme, providing encounters in music, film, theatre, dance, literature, philosophy, fashion and technology. Each year’s commission respond to the unique architecture of the Pavilion, inviting audiences to experience the activated space.

Launching a season of specially curated activations, this year’s Pavilion will play host to a series of live events and become a stage for public engagement:

Starting on Friday 5 June, 16:30, LANZA atelier will be in conversation with Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist to discuss the concepts and design of this year’s Pavilion.

From July, a serpentine will become a platform for Serpentine’s Park Nights, the annual interdisciplinary platform for live encounters that will see artists create new site-specific works.

This summer, on 20 June, 25 July, 29 August and 10 October, Curator Tamsin Hong and Assistant Exhibitions Curator Liz Stumpf will lead free afternoon tours of the Pavilion.

On 7 June, 19 July and 23 August, Serpentine will host the Pavilion Family Days, three free, drop-in family days featuring workshops, creative activities and performances for all ages inspired by the Serpentine Pavilion, with families invited to bring a picnic.

Serpentine will collaborate with the Zaha Hadid Foundation and the Architectural Association as part of a two-day symposium to commemorate Zaha Hadid’s life and work, and mark the 25th Serpentine Pavilion. A dedicated programme on architecture will take place in The Magazine at Serpentine North, designed by Zaha Hadid. As the architect of the inaugural Serpentine Pavilion in 2000, Hadid’s spirit of innovation has set the tone for what has since become one of the world’s most influential architectural commissions. This approach continues to shape not only the Pavilion series, but also Serpentine’s wider programme of exhibitions and live events. Bringing together leading architects, thinkers, and cultural practitioners, the programme will explore questions at the forefront of architecture today, reflecting on Zaha Hadid’s career and the legacy of the Pavilion whilst looking ahead to the possibilities of the future.

This year’s Pavilion selection was made by Serpentine CEO Bettina Korek; Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist; Director of Construction and Special Projects Julie Burnell; Exhibitions Curator Chris Bayley; Exhibitions Curator Tamsin Hong; and Assistant Exhibitions Curator Liz Stumpf, together with advisor Sou Fujimoto.

Serpentine will publish LANZA atelier’s first monograph to accompany the Pavilion. Designed by Estudio Herrera, it will bring together new and insightful contributions from the fields of architecture, art and poetry. Generously illustrated in colour, it features newly commissioned essays by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Cristina Rivera Garza, José Esparza Chong Cuy, and LANZA atelier founder Isabel Abascal alongside a poem by Ocean Vuong. It also includes a conversation between LANZA atelier founders Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo with Serpentine’s Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist.