Since the year 2000 — when its very first pavilion was designed by Zaha Hadid – the Serpentine Gallery, nestled in the heart of Kensington Gardens in London, has each summer offered carte blanche to an architect who has never built in the United Kingdom, inviting them to design a temporary structure free from any functional constraint. This event, now a landmark in contemporary architecture, celebrated its 25th edition this year by commissioning Bangladeshi architect and educator Marina Tabassum to design the pavilion. Entitled A Capsule in Time, the installation will remain on view on the lawn of Serpentine South until 26 October 2025.

Since 2005, Marina Tabassum has developed, through her Dhaka-based practice Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA), an approach deeply rooted in the Bangladeshi context. Committed both socially and ecologically – two inseparable dimensions in a country largely shaped by deltaic plains, where rising waters and river erosion impose forced mobility on the most vulnerable communities – the practice stands in opposition to the logic of globalised production. For Marina Tabassum advocates an architecture of listening, one that serves as a vehicle for expressing a country’s culture and history.

Among her most emblematic projects are the Bait Ur Rouf Mosque – a place of worship notable for its absence of traditional iconography and the way its luminous atmosphere is shaped by the sun’s trajectory – and Khudi Bari, modular bamboo and steel homes originally designed to provide affordable, mobile shelter for marginalised communities living along the unpredictable banks of the Meghna River, and now deployed in several Rohingya refugee camps. “We’ve been working over the past five years trying to create housing for marginalised individuals, including families, and displaced populations.The perpetual movement of these people involves not only their bodies, but also their houses. This temporality of architecture speaks more of movement than of time. This work has been fundamental in helping us understand that architecture becomes truly timeless when it responds precisely to the movements that shape and surround it.”

This reflection guided Marina Tabassum in the design of the Serpentine Pavilion – the first structure her practice had built outside Bangladesh. “When we were invited to participate, we realised that this commission could serve as a powerful demonstration of the movements of architecture: you can sense the volumes and the atmosphere of a generous space while being enveloped in an almost material light; at the same time, you remain aware of its inherently ephemeral nature. It is a building designed to celebrate the light of summer, the shadow of a cloud, the rain so typical of London, and the beauty of the park – for five months only,” she explains.

When asked about the contrast between this London commission – supported for the eleventh consecutive year by Goldman Sachs –and the activist projects she typically undertakes in Bangladesh, Marina Tabassum resists any rigid comparison: “It’s an invitation, right? Of course, the ephemeral nature of the Serpentine Pavilion has little in common with the emergency shelters we design in Bangladesh, apart, maybe, from a few modular and construction principles. But I was already familiar with this context: I’ve come here many times, especially to see previous pavilions… I didn’t find this commission daunting, quite the opposite. As architects, we are always confronted with interesting challenges: it was a privilege to bring our architecture, our own thinking and ethos outside Bangladesh. I’ve already designed several such installations in other places, which are closer to a statement than actual buildings.”

Oriented along a north-south axis, the structure is organised around a central courtyard aligned with the bell tower of Serpentine South. The envelope of the “capsule”, composed of four ellipsoidal façades with polycarbonate panels set into steel frames that diffuse and filter daylight, is inspired by shamiyanas – lightweight tents with colourful drapery traditionally used for celebrations and ceremonies in several South Asian countries. One of these translucent façades is movable, allowing the space to be reconfigured and inviting the public to engage with it in different ways, depending on the ever-changing London skies.

While the structural arches of shamiyanas are traditionally made of bamboo, Marina Tabassum has chosen to work here with a glued-laminated timber frame. “Wood is not part of the construction vocabulary in my country, but we adapted to the European context. As the structure had to be built using dry construction methods, we wanted to design a form and system that could be easily assembled and dismantled – and later relocated, when the building begins its second life [Serpentine Pavilions are usually acquired by architecture enthusiasts. Ed.].”

Like a welcoming refuge, the Pavilion will this summer host the Park Nights – a series of performances, readings, concerts and discussions. Shelves integrated into the walls also house a library dedicated to Bengali culture: literature, poetry, ecology… “Our intention was also to celebrate the diversity that defines London – both its residents and those just passing through – by bringing them together in a single space.” With this “capsule in time”, Marina Tabassum brings her humanist approach to the very heart of London and grants architecture a rare function: a space for light, for transition, and for encounter. At the centre of the Pavilion stands a semi-mature Ginkgo biloba, which will be replanted in Kensington Gardens at the close of the exhibition. This gesture reaffirms the link between architecture, movement, and ecosystem – a constant in Tabassum’s work. By the end of the exhibition, its leaves will have turned to gold, extending, beyond the structure itself, the meditation on time that lies at the heart of her practice.

Marina Tabassum is an architect and educator, currently a professor at TU Delft. She previously held the Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto (2022–2023) and has taught at Harvard, in Texas, as well as at the Bengal Institute and BRAC University in Bangladesh.
In 2005, she founded her practice Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA) in Dhaka. The studio is known for its contextual approach, rooted in local climate, culture, history and geography, and positioned in deliberate opposition to the globalised logic of consumer-driven architecture. MTA prioritises carefully selected, self-built projects and deliberately limits the number it undertakes each year. The studio also conducts research into the impacts of climate change in Bangladesh, working closely with geographers, landscape architects and urban planners, with a particular focus on marginalised communities and the improvement of their living conditions.