The 2025 Serpentine Pavilion will be designed by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum and her firm, Dhaka-based Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA). Titled A Capsule in Time, it will open to the public on 6 June 2025. The annual architectural commission, launched in 2000 with a pavilion by Zaha Hadid, has since featured designs by Frida Escobedo, Theaster Gates, Sou Fujimoto and, most recently, Minsuk Cho.
MTA was founded following her decade-long partnership with URBANA in 2005, and is known for its social, political and ecological engagement with design. Tabassum continues to research environmental degradation in Bangladesh in the face of climate change, and has developed since 2020 ‘Khuda Bari’ (small house) modular structures for those living on the sand beds of rivers, which can be easily disassembled and moved when necessary.
Tabassum’s design for the 2025 Pavilion has been inspired by the surrounding Kensington Gardens and other recreational parks, as well as arched garden canopies that filter daylight through green foliage. It will be made up of four wooden capsule forms with a translucent facade that diffuses and dapples light when infiltrating the space. A key kinetic element allows the capsules to move and connect, transforming the interior space – a reference to the visual language of Shamiyana tents or awnings in South Asia, informal structures made up of an external fabric supported by bamboo poles, which are similarly kinetic.
‘When conceiving our design, we reflected on the transient nature of the commission which appears to us as a capsule of memory and time. The relationship between time and architecture is intriguing: between permanence and impermanence, of birth, age and ruin; architecture aspires to outlive time’ Tabassum stated. ‘Architecture is a tool to live behind legacies, fulfilling the inherent human desire for continuity beyond life.’
