Lanza Atelier designs 2026 Serpentine Pavilion for 25th Anniversary

Doing architecture comes from not taking things for granted. Architecture is a main partner of the wind, the sun, the earth. We have been since the very beginning very interested in human-made constructions and the natural environment. I'm Sabina Bafcal. — I'm Alessandro Rienza. We're together founders of Mexico City based architecture studio called Lanza Atelier. We are the architects of this year's Serpentine Pavilion in London. Mexico, as everybody knows, is huge. Almost half of the city is self-built. You could learn a lot of things from the building environment. We do furniture. We do houses. We even do Serpentine Pavilions. Architecture, I think, exists in every scale. For us it has the same importance. We discuss many different things that might not directly have to do with architecture, but somehow we can reference them to the creation of a space of an experience. I think it's just a lot of conversation and drawing and observing. The pavilion is called the Serpentine. We decided to land a Serpentine wall in the garden, splitting half of the garden in two, of course, north and south, so we can have — a covered space and an open space. Something which we believe it's magnetic and magical about the Serpentine walls is that everybody connects with the joy of having an undulating wall. We were very interested in this crinkle walls and we wanted to reenact those very old constructions into the 21st century. In the UK between the 18th and 19th century, there was this strong tax on bricks. So, people were looking for ways to use less bricks. When you have a straight brick wall, you need to have at least two lines of bricks to prevent that straight wall from toppling down. If you have an undulating or wavy wall, the waves make that wall very stable. So, you can have only one line of bricks. The brick is most standard, most used brick in the UK. It's called a Sienna brick. We also studied the former pavilions and there was none made by bricks. The pavilion is built half of it with architecture history and the other half is contemporary. That dialogue, I think, is very important for us. New ideas comes from experimentation. It's more about playing and get to know the purpose of the project. At some point, the project has its soul. You realize the project is leading you somewhere — and you just have to follow.