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Serving seen all summer on the green carpet of Kensington Gardens, the experimental Serpentine Pavilion is often best viewed as an architectural piece of haute couture. For the past 25 years, he has been hosting all kinds of fashionistas, from American Frank Gehry, whose balcony was like a burst of wood, to the Swiss magus Peter Zumthor, who built the charcoal wall closed garden (contemplation room), which organized the entire park.
The rules of the Serpentine partnership are simple: the chosen architect does not have to build in the UK, so it is an opportunity to show new or original talent. The concentration of many prominent male stars, which characterized the early imperial phase, has given way to what can be described as a medium-sized life, with young architects from different regions.
This year is the time of Lanza Ateliera studio based in Mexico City founded in 2015 by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo. They are known for reinterpreting (and deconstructing) familiar materials and forms through their exploration of art, technology and landscape design traditions.
Abascal and Arienzo have gone back to basics and created one of the most authentic Serpentine Pavilions in years, with a real serpent, presented as a curved wall of rust colored bricks. A fun technical onomatopoeic word for this type is crinkle-crankle wall. Mainly in rural Suffolk, crinkle-crankle was introduced by Dutch engineers who drained the Fens marshes from the 1700s onwards. The Dutch invited them snake wall (walls of snakes). But they are also found in Mexico and have been found in ancient Egyptian excavations.
Mathematicians can describe them as sinusoidal, while architects can point to their beautiful wealth of materials: the curvilinear shape provides natural stability and resistance to lateral forces, creating solid structures that require only one brick, without the need for additional. If they are built east and west, as is the case here, the south-facing side catches the sun, releasing the heat of the fruit trees’ history and prolonging the growing season. Abascal said: “They are the buildings that make the climate cool, they create places to live and to grow.”
Walls have come under fire of late, particularly in regards to President Trump’s “big beautiful wall” on the US/Mexico border. This, then, is an opportunity to reform a bad (and often bad) system. “We are creating a wall that attracts rather than divides and becomes a meeting place and creates small rooms,” says Abascal. A wall does not need to be built to divide.
These two are like the concept of “gentle geometry”, which “constantly responds to those who pass through it.” The concept of the “serpentine” pavilion was developed by establishing a building line around the existing wooden beams. “That’s where geometry comes from, understanding the boundaries of space,” says Arienzo. The static form also refers to the Serpentine pool that weaves through the park, while the serpentine-shaped bench is the “mini-me” relative of the pavilion.
This structure has a flat glass roof supported by a metal panel, with a fixed surface to block the summer sun and cast a cool shade around the interior. It’s all simple and clear, the only idea of a showbiz drama being a row of flashing lights on top of a crinkle-crankle wall.
To date, the inventory of building materials used in the Serpentine’s history has included door, wood, slate, glass, concrete and inflatables. But, surprisingly, it is the first time that bricks have been used, so far known to be immovable and durable for temporary construction.
Made in Surrey, in a factory that supplied antiques to London, the bricks are large, subtly modified and enhanced by Lanza’s design. Being without mud ropes, they are covered through reinforced metal, like beads on a chain, which makes the pavilion easy to release, without damage or loss.
Informally, the bricks are placed back to front, sides with ribs, which add visual interest, on top of it like a woven cloth (usually, the ribs are facing inward, which provides a place for mud to stick).
Lanza’s brick walls reflect the red brick construction of its neighbors Pictures of the Serpentine South Galleryitself a large 1930s version of the parkland pavilion, as well as the wider South Kensington area, with its Victorian brick blocks and the pièce de résistance of the Royal Albert Hall.
A modern American architect Frank Lloyd Wright famously said: “Do you know what a brick is?”
Arienzo agrees. He said: “Brick is not the most luxurious thing. But when you see it laid or built in another way, it creates interest and this makes people enjoy it. As an archetypal building block, which has been used for a thousand years, but still works in the hands of man, it seems clear that after 25 years, the time of Snake brick has come.
