Skip to main content
The Morning Star 2026 Conference
Structural defect
MICHAL BONCZA takes issue with this year's uninspiring Serpentine Pavilion
Serpentine Escobedo [Norbert Tukaj]

FRIDA ESCOBEDO’S Pavilion at the Serpentine in London this year has none of the luminous joie de vivre Francis Kere regaled us with a summer ago, the spatial intrigue Bjarke Ingels Group offered in 2016 or the mesmerising filigree of Sou Fujimoto’s Cloud construct in 2013.

Formally, Escobedo’s three-metre high “walls,” made up of stacks of standard dark-grey cement roof tiles, demarcate two rectangular atria. On the inside, the lattice patterning filters and fragments outside vistas and shifts in light as well as any air circulation.

Escobedo has used triangulated breeze blocks when remodelling the Siqueiros gallery in Cuernavaca in 2014 to similar effect but on a larger scale.

Housing project in Tepetzintan by Mariana Ordonez Grajales (Pic: Onnis Luque)
Francis Kere Pavilion Photo: Serpentine Gallery
The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
arnolfini
Exhibition review / 3 March 2026
3 March 2026

SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective

THE HORROR REMAINS: (above) ‘The Terror of War’, photograph showing naked Phan Thi Kim Phuc (9 surrounded by brothers and cousins) running down a road near Trang Bang, Vietnam / Pic: Public domain/CC
Culture / 2 January 2026
2 January 2026

If true, the photo’s history is a damning indictment of the systematic exploitation of non-Western journalists by Western media organisations – a pattern that persists today, posit KATE CANTRELL and ALISON BEDFORD

(L to R) How many Aunties?, Back Hares Mount, Leeds, 1978; M
Photography / 14 April 2025
14 April 2025

Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds

The crowd at Manchester Punk Festival 2024
Culture / 11 April 2025
11 April 2025
Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month