Time, Light & Nature: Marina Tabassum’s Serpentine Pavilion 2025

For the 25th edition of the Serpentine Pavilion, a landmark commission at the crossroads of experimentation and architecture with Goldman Sachs supporting the annual project for the 11th consecutive year, the celebrated Bangladeshi architect and educator Marina Tabassum takes centre stage with a design that is as poetic as it is grounded in ecological and cultural awareness.

Marina Tabassum’s London debut opens on 6 June 2025, marking a significant moment not just for the Pavilion but also for contemporary architecture, as it celebrates a lineage of bold design initiated by Dame Zaha Hadid in 2000.

Rooted in Light

Titled “A Capsule in Time,” Marina’s Pavilion is an ode to temporality and transformation. With her practice, Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA), she brings her signature sensibility—one that engages deeply with climate, context, and cultural memory — into the heart of Kensington Gardens. Her design draws inspiration from the spiritual and sensory, reflecting her belief that architecture is not merely about form, but also about the interplay of light, air, and human experience.

Stretching longitudinally along a north-south axis, the Pavilion features a central courtyard aligned with Serpentine South’s bell tower. Marina’s sculptural vision is made manifest through four wooden capsule forms sheathed in translucent façades, which diffuse daylight in a manner reminiscent of sunlight filtering through tree canopies. These organic shapes speak to the architectural traditions of garden structures and the South Asian vernacular, yet are distinctly contemporary in articulation.

“Architecture is about more than just shelter—it can be a space for reflection, for dialogue, for sharing,” Marina has said. “This Pavilion is imagined as a living space that changes with time, with light, and with the people who inhabit it.”

Light also played an important role in creating the space: “One atmospheric idea that we wanted to bring into this pavilion is the translucency and the ethereal quality of light,” Tabassum explained. “Light, to me, is a very important material in architecture.”

This regard for light and its play with architecture is reflected in other buildings designed by Marina, the Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka, where perforated brickwork creates a play of light and shadow, as well as Khudi Bari, a lightweight, portable bamboo home developed in response to the mass displacement caused by flooding in Bangladesh.

The Serpentine design also draws inspiration from shamianas, which are ceremonial tents commonly used in South East Asia.

“As a child, I have memories of being in these structures, where you can see light coming through,” she said. “It was constantly reminding me of shamianas.”

A Living Element at the Core

At the centre of the Pavilion stands a semi-mature Ginkgo tree, a species chosen not just for its prehistoric lineage and golden autumn leaves, but also for its climate resilience.

This climate resilient tree species dates back to the early Jurassic Period and throughout the course of summer and into autumn, the Gingko tree leaves will slowly shift from green to luminous gold-yellow. The selection of a Gingko, was inspired by the fact this species is showing tolerance to climate change and contributes to a diverse treescape in Kensington Gardens. The species is not susceptible to many current pest and diseases, and will be replanted into the park following the Pavilion’s closure in October. The tree becomes a living monument around which the Pavilion orbits, echoing Tabassum’s deep commitment to sustainability and ecological thought. Following the Pavilion’s deinstallation, the Ginkgo will be replanted in Kensington Gardens, adding permanence to an otherwise ephemeral intervention.

A remarkable feature of Tabassum’s Pavilion is its kinetic capsule—a mobile architectural element that can shift position and reconfigure the internal space. This dynamic gesture aligns with her interest in transience and motion, allowing the Pavilion to evolve throughout the summer months. Her design does not impose itself on the site but instead enters into dialogue with it—malleable, sensitive, and responsive.

From Pavilion to Public Library

More than a place for contemplation, “A Capsule in Time” is also conceived as a vessel for knowledge. In response to the sociopolitical currents of censorship and restricted expression, Marina has curated a library celebrating Bengali culture, literature, ecology, and poetry—books housed within integrated shelves along the interior walls. These texts, carefully selected by MTA, anchor the Pavilion’s afterlife as a travelling library, accessible long after the structure departs from Serpentine’s lawn.

This thoughtful layering of function, materiality, and symbolism is emblematic of Marina’s broader architectural philosophy—one that reframes architecture as an agent of care, memory, and connection.

Continuing a Legacy of Experimentation

With “A Capsule in Time,” Marina not only honours the Serpentine Pavilion’s legacy of innovation but also expands its meaning. Where past commissions have often leaned into spectacle, Marina offers instead a quieter, more introspective architecture—one that listens as much as it speaks.

As the Pavilion opens to the public, it offers Londoners and global visitors alike a chance to enter a space shaped by light, rooted in culture, and open to transformation. And in that moment of stillness beneath the Ginkgo’s golden canopy, Tabassum reminds us of architecture’s potential to be both a temporal marker and a timeless refuge.