Serpentine Pavilion 2025: "A Capsule in Time"

The Serpentine Pavilion 2025, designed by Bangladeshi architect and educator Marina Tabassum, will be inaugurated on Friday 6 June in Kensington Gardens, in the heart of London. Entitled A Capsule in Time, the pavilion is conceived as a spatial meditation on transience, light, and the shared memory of place, and will remain open to visitors until 26 October.

Launched with Zaha Hadid in 2000, the Serpentine Galleries project celebrates its 25^th anniversary this year—marking a quarter-century of temporary structures created by architects from around the world, selected by the annual commission of the contemporary art gallery in Hyde Park.

Marina Tabassum, the First South Asian Solo Voice

Marina Tabassum is the first architect from South Asia to be selected as the sole designer for this commission, joining a prestigious list of international names that includes, among others, several architects who later received the Pritzker Prize: Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Oscar Niemeyer, Rem Koolhaas, Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura, Frank Gehry, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryūe Nishizawa, Jean Nouvel, Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron, and Diébédo Francis Kéré.

Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA), the Dhaka-based design studio, has over the years developed a practice rooted in the interplay between architecture, climate, culture, and community. A Capsule in Time reflects this approach: the project draws inspiration from the language of the Shamiyana, traditional Bengali canopies used for communal celebrations, reinterpreting their form in a contemporary key.

Light, Time, and Collective Memory

Composed of four elongated wooden capsule forms aligned along a north–south axis, the Pavilion frames a central courtyard anchored by a mature tree and aligned with the bell tower of Serpentine Gallery. The translucent façades filter daylight softly, evoking the dappled effects of light beneath tree canopies.

One of the capsules is designed to move—introducing a kinetic element that speaks to the impermanence of architecture in a shifting landscape, especially in Tabassum’s native Bengal delta, where homes are often relocated in response to flooding rivers. The Pavilion’s kinetic qualities recall earlier commissions—most notably the levitating roof designed by Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond in 2006—while firmly asserting a language of its own: one grounded in material lightness, spiritual depth, and architectural humility.

A Dynamic Cultural Stage

Tabassum describes the project as a capsule of memory and time—a structure that moves between permanence and ephemerality, an invitation to share. This idea of openness is reflected both in the architectural concept of the pavilion and in the riche cultural programme it will host from June to October. The pavilion will be home to Park Nights, the Serpentine Gallery’s annual summer series of live events, featuring a rich calendar of interdisciplinary performances and transforming the structure into a dynamic cultural stage.

A Reflective Pavilion for the 25th Anniversary

The selection of Tabassum reaffirms Serpentine’s commitment to architecture as an experimental and inclusive cultural practice. In a year marking the 25th anniversary of the Pavilion programme, A Capsule in Time sets a reflective tone—honoring a history of innovation while opening new conversations about temporality, resilience, and the ethics of space-making in a time of global transition.