Marina Tabassum to Design 2025 Serpentine Pavilion
131Jan. 31, 2025
Bangladeshi architectMarina Tabassumand her Dhaka-based firm, Marina Tabassum Architects, have been chosen to design the 2025Serpentine Pavilion. The chance to build a temporary summer pavilion outside London’sSerpentinecontemporary art gallery has since 2000 been offered annually to an international architect who has not yet built a structure in England. Past pavilion designers include Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Frida Escobedo, and Theaster Gates.
Tabassum founded her firm, whose designs center social, political, and ecological engagement, in 2005. She is especially concerned with structures that respond to climate change in Bangladesh and in 2020 began work on herKhudi Barimodular residences. Designed for populations occupying sandy riverbeds, the bamboo-and-steel structures, whose name translates to “Small House” in English, can be swiftly dismantled and reassembled should an event such as a flood necessitate a quick move.
Tabasssum’s pavilion design is titled A Capsule in Time and draws from the Kensington Gardens, which are near the Serpentine, as well as from arched garden trellises. The structure will comprise four separate arched timber modules surrounding translucent panels, which will allow light into the pavilion, the effect recalling that of sunlight filtered through foliage. The sections—one of which will be movable—will surround a small central courtyard containing a single tree aligned with the Serpentine’s bell tower.
“When conceiving our design, we reflected on the transient nature of the commission which appears to us as a capsule of memory and time,” said Tabassum in a statement. “The relationship between time and architecture is intriguing: between permanence and impermanence, of birth, age and ruin; architecture aspires to outlive time. Architecture is a tool to live behind legacies, fulfilling the inherent human desire for continuity beyond life.”
Tabassum’s pavilion will open to the public on June 6, 2025.