{"id":713060,"date":"2026-06-03T21:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/713060\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T21:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:08:09","slug":"bricking-it-how-a-crinkle-crankle-wall-reinvented-the-serpentine-pavilion-architecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/713060\/","title":{"rendered":"Bricking it! How a \u2018crinkle crankle\u2019 wall reinvented the Serpentine pavilion | Architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Serving looks all summer on the green carpet of Kensington Gardens, the often wildly experimental Serpentine pavilion is best viewed as a piece of architectural haute couture. For the last 25 years, it has hosted all sorts of fashionistas, from the American Frank Gehry,<\/a> whose pavilion resembled an explosion in a lumber yard, to Swiss magus Peter Zumthor,<\/a> who built a charcoal-walled hortus conclusus (contemplative room), that tuned out the wider park landscape entirely.<\/p>\n

The Serpentine\u2019s rules of engagement are simple: the selected architect should not have built in the UK, so it\u2019s a chance to showcase new or unsung talent. The constellation of largely white male superstars doing elaborate parodies of themselves, which characterised the pavilion\u2019s early imperial phase, has given way to what might be described as more nuanced midlife, featuring younger emerging architects from more diverse backgrounds.<\/p>\n

This year it\u2019s the turn of Lanza Atelier<\/a>, a Mexico City-based studio founded in 2015 by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo. They\u2019re known for reinterpreting (and subverting) familiar materials and forms through their explorations of craft, technology and spatial design traditions.<\/p>\n

Abascal and Arienzo have gone back to basics and produced one of the most literal Serpentine pavilions in years, featuring an actual serpentine, expressed as a wavy wall of rust-coloured brick. The delightfully onomatopoeic technical term for this is a crinkle-crankle wall. Particular to rural Suffolk, the crinkle-crankle was originally introduced by Dutch engineers engaged to drain the marshes of the Fens from the mid-17th century onwards. The Dutch called them slangenmuur (snake walls). But they are also common in Mexico and have been found in excavations of ancient Egyptian civilisations.<\/p>\n

An aerial view shows the Lanza Atelier pavilion\u2019s snakelike wall. Photograph: Iwan Baan, Courtesy Serpentine.\/\u00a9 Lanza atelier<\/p>\n

Mathematicians might describe them as sinusoidal, while structural engineers would point to their elegant economy of materials: the curvilinear form provides inherent stability and resists lateral forces, creating a robust structure that requires only a single layer of bricks, with no need for additional buttressing. If constructed on an east-west axis, as is the case here, the south-facing side catches the sun, generating warmth for the historic cultivation of fruit trees and prolonging the growing season. \u201cThey\u2019re structures that temper climate, create shelter and enable growth,\u201d says Abascal.<\/p>\n

Walls have had a pretty dismal press of late, particularly in respect of President Trump\u2019s \u201cbig beautiful wall\u201d on the US\/Mexico border. This, then, is an opportunity to reframe a maligned (and often malign) structure. \u201cWe\u2019re doing a wall that attracts instead of divides and becomes a gathering place and creates a series of little rooms,\u201d says Abascal. \u201cA wall doesn\u2019t necessarily need to be built for division.\u201d<\/p>\n

The duo like the idea of \u201cgentle geometry\u201d, which is \u201ccontinually responsive to those who move through it.\u201d The concept of a \u201cserpentine\u201d pavilion originated when setting out the building line around the curves of existing tree canopies. \u201cSo that\u2019s where the geometry comes from, understanding the common limits of the site,\u201d says Arienzo. The undulating form also alludes to the Serpentine pond weaving through the park, while a serpentine-shaped bench is a kindred \u201cmini-me\u201d of the pavilion.<\/p>\n

The bricks are set back to front which adds further textural interest. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

The structure is topped by a flat glass roof supported by a steel grid, inset with fixed louvres to deflect the summer sun and throw cooling shade around the interior. It\u2019s all very simple and logical, the only hint of potential showbiz drama being a row of glittering lights set along the top of the crinkle-crankle wall.<\/p>\n

To date, the inventory of building materials used in Serpentine history has included cork, timber, slate, glass, concrete and an inflatable. But, surprisingly, it\u2019s the first time that brick has been employed, hitherto possibly regarded as too earthbound and permanent for a temporary structure.<\/p>\n

Manufactured in Surrey, at a plant that historically supplied material for London buildings, the bricks are a standard size, their ordinariness subtly transformed and elevated by Lanza\u2019s design. Set without mortar joints, they are threaded through reinforcing bars, like beads on a chain, which will make the pavilion easier to dismantle, without damage or waste.<\/p>\n

Unconventionally, the bricks are set back to front, ribbed sides out, which adds further textural interest, the surface resembling a kind of woven textile (normally, the ribs face inwards, providing an adhering surface for mortar).<\/p>\n

The structure is topped by a flat glass roof with fixed louvres that deflect the sun. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Lanza\u2019s wiggly brick walls allude to the weathered red brickwork of the neighbouring Serpentine South Gallery<\/a>, itself a grand 1930s version of a parkland pavilion, as well as the wider South Kensington milieu, with its Victorian brick mansion blocks and the pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance of the Royal Albert Hall.<\/p>\n

The pioneering American modernist Frank Lloyd Wright once famously said: \u201cDo you know what a brick is? A brick is a small, ordinary, worthless thing that costs 11 cents, but give me a brick and it becomes worth its weight in gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arienzo agrees. \u201cA brick is nothing very sophisticated,\u201d he says. \u201cBut once you see it laid down or built in a different way, it sparks curiosity and that makes people enjoy it more.\u201d As the archetypal building block, used for millennia, but still fitting into a human hand, it seems only right that after 25 years, brick\u2019s Serpentine time has finally come.<\/p>\n

Lanza Atelier\u2019s Serpentine pavilion<\/a> is open from 6 June until 25 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serving looks all summer on the green carpet of Kensington Gardens, the often wildly experimental Serpentine pavilion is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-713060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}