Serpentine has announced a new collaboration with the Zaha Hadid Foundation to commemorate Zaha Hadid’s legacy and mark the 25th Serpentine Pavilion.
Starting in 2026, a dedicated programme of panel discussions and talks on architecture will take place within the Serpentine Pavilion.
The series will launch with a special conversation featuring former Serpentine Pavilion architects Lina Ghotmeh (2023) and Sumayya Vally (2021), in dialogue with Aric Chen and Hans Ulrich Obrist on Thursday 16th October 2025 from 8.45am to 11am with a prompt start at 9.30am.
The collaboration takes inspiration from Zaha Hadid’s enduring ethos, “There should be no end to experimentation.” As the architect of the inaugural Serpentine Pavilion in 2000, Hadid’s spirit of innovation has set the tone for what has since become one of the world’s most influential architectural commissions. This approach continues to shape not only the Pavilion series, but also Serpentine’s wider programme of exhibitions and live events.
This new series of talks aims to connect new and wider audiences with innovative architectural conversations. Bringing together leading architects, thinkers, and cultural practitioners, the series will foster transnational and transgenerational architectural dialogue, inviting former Pavilion architects to explore questions at the forefront of architecture today, reflecting on Zaha Hadid’s career and the legacy of the Pavilion whilst looking ahead to the possibilities of the future.
Further details of the programme will be announced in early 2026.
Bettina Korek, CEO, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of Serpentine, said: “We often quote Zaha Hadid’s belief that there ‘should be no end to experimentation.’ Zaha’s spirit remains a vital inspiration for our programme. As we mark 25 years of the Pavilion, we return to its origins while creating space for new ideas. We are grateful to Aric Chen and the Zaha Hadid Foundation for celebrating her enduring legacy with us. The collaboration launches with a Frieze Week panel, and we warmly thank Lina Ghotmeh and Sumayya Vally for joining this inaugural conversation.”
Aric Chen, Director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation said: “Through her boundary-breaking life and work, Zaha changed the course of architecture, and her early and longstanding collaboration with the Serpentine played no small part in this. We’re thrilled and honoured to start this collaboration with an institution she was so close to, and that so deeply shares her commitment to innovation and the public.”
The groundbreaking commission, first launched in 2000 with Dame Zaha Hadid, has presented the first UK structures by some of the most significant names and emerging talent in international architecture.
The Serpentine Pavilions are realised with the support of technical advisors AECOM. In recent years it has grown into a highly anticipated showcase for emerging talents, from Sumayya Vally, Counterspace (South Africa), the youngest architect to be commissioned, and Frida Escobedo (Mexico), to Diébédo Francis Kéré (Burkina Faso) and Bjarke Ingels (Denmark).
