Marina Tabassum’s Vision for the Serpentine at 25 Plants a Radical Stillness

Inaugurated on a quietly atmospheric morning by Serpentine Chief Executive Bettina Korek and Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion emerged not with spectacle but with a soft radiance. Designed by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, A Capsule in Time marks the 25th anniversary of the Serpentine’s architectural commission—a legacy inaugurated by Dame Zaha Hadid—and introduces to London audiences a practice grounded not in spectacle, but in social resonance, climate logic, and cultural memory.

The pavilion itself—a set of four timber capsules arranged in an elongated cross-axis—is both architectural and vegetal, with a living ginkgo tree planted at its center. This tree, climate-resilient and ancient in lineage, becomes the spiritual and ecological anchor of the installation. Its leaves will shift from deep green to golden yellow over the coming months, before being transplanted permanently into Kensington Gardens after the Pavilion closes on October 26. Light, filtered through translucent facades, dapples the structure like memory through fabric. Inside, the space hums with something rare: quiet radicality.

Contextual Sustainability in Kensington Gardens

Tabassum, speaking with humility and clarity at the press launch, recalled the moment she received the commission from Obrist in October 2024. “It came just as Bangladesh had undergone a major political shift—the end of a fifteen-year regime,” she said. “There was uncertainty, but also hope. This project arrived in the midst of that atmosphere.”

Her practice, Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA), has been shaped by the topographies and urgencies of Bangladesh—flood zones, displacement, community resilience. “When I began studying architecture, I was deeply influenced by Louis Kahn’s Parliament building in Dhaka,” she noted. “It was about permanence, about timelessness. But in recent years, working with displaced communities, I began to see architecture as temporal. Not static. Not fixed. Responsive.” She continued, “I wondered how architecture could carry legacy beyond our lives. But I now believe legacy is also about adaptation. About making space for others.”

“I now believe legacy is also about adaptation. About making space for others,”

—Marina Tabassum

This idea of temporal legacy is manifest in the design: a pavilion that can be disassembled and relocated, constructed with dry-joint techniques, and featuring one kinetic capsule that can subtly shift to create new spatial relationships. The design draws inspiration from South Asian shamiyanas—fabric-draped tents used in weddings and communal gatherings—but reinterprets them in timber, polycarbonate, and restrained geometry.

The Serpentine Pavilion as Civic Engagement

For Obrist, the choice of Tabassum was a deliberate intervention in architectural discourse. “In Marina, we found an architect from Bangladesh who holds such deep compassion for her community,” he said. “She has shown us that architecture can move beyond visual dominance toward something more vital: an architecture of relevance, one that responds directly to the urgencies of our time.” Obrist continued, “We need a generation of architects who address disparity and displacement, who help bring balance back into our lives, stitch together fragmented societies, and repair the damage that has been done.” This commission, he emphasized, is not simply about aesthetic exploration, but civic engagement.

“We need a generation of architects who address disparity and displacement, who help bring balance back into our lives,”

—Hans Ulrich Obrist

Design Intent Behind A Capsule in Time

The Pavilion is activated through Serpentine’s Park Nights, which begin in July—an interdisciplinary series blending music, poetry, performance, and dance. This year also introduces a collaboration with New Currency and the Zahavi Foundation, as well as a Saturday tour series led by Curator Chris Bayley.

Inside, built-in bookshelves offer a carefully curated library that reflects Tabassum’s own intellectual cosmos: Bengali poetry and literature, writings on climate justice, essays on architecture and displacement. This, she notes, hints at the Pavilion’s envisioned “afterlife” as a traveling library—a site of ongoing knowledge exchange.

In an era marked by ecological precarity and political noise, A Capsule in Time resists both bombast and minimalism. It is, instead, deeply human. Its strength lies in the layering of references: botanical time, liturgical space, cultural specificity, and tectonic adaptability.

As Tabassum reflected during her opening remarks: “The Serpentine Pavilion celebrates the London summer—a time to be outdoors, connecting with friends and family. On a sunny day, the filtered daylight through the translucent façade reminds me of being under a shamiyana at a Bengali wedding.” But even under a cloudy sky, the Pavilion glows with invitation.

How Can Architecture Create Community?

By the time it closes in late October, A Capsule in Time will have hosted hundreds of conversations, gatherings, and moments of silent reflection. And yet its lasting imprint will not be the events it contains, but the questions it quietly poses: How can architecture create community? How do we build in response to loss, migration, and climate change? What does it mean to construct something designed not to last forever, but to continue—elsewhere, in another form?

“It takes a village to make architecture,”

—Marina Tabassum

“It takes a village to make architecture,” Tabassum said, smiling gently. “If this is an idea, I can only claim 20 percent. The rest belongs to everyone who helped bring it to life.” It’s not an ending, but a beginning. A structure that breathes. A pavilion that listens.