A serpentine wall in 26,000 bricks: the 2026 Serpentine Pavilion unveiled

The 2026 Serpentine Pavilion designed by Mexican architecture studio LANZA atelier, founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, opened on 6 June 2026. Throughout the summer and until October, the Pavilion will host Serpentine’s vibrant public programme.  

wienerberger UK & Ireland is a Bronze sponsor of this year’s Pavilion, donating 26,000 Sienna Red facing bricks manufactured at our Ewhurst site in Surrey to bring the striking structure to life.

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. 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 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.”    
 
Dave Henry, Head of Sales - Construction at wienerberger UK & Ireland attended the opening ceremony and commented: “It was a privilege to see the Pavilion completed and unveiled in all its glory. It beautifully demonstrates brick’s potential, and I’m delighted wienerberger could play a part in bringing it to life.”