Marina Tabassum: Designing London's Serpentine Pavilion

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1:19Marina Tabassum:I do have a beautiful memory when I was young of being dressed up for a wedding. Our dressing are always very colorful in Bangladesh. And we have large families, as you know, in our country. And you have to invite everybody, otherwise people will not be happy. So it's not like 200, 300 people. It's like thousands altogether. So you have to have a large space.

1:44Erika Wright:Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service, where we wander into the minds of some of the most creative people on the planet. I'm Erica Wright, and today I want to explore how childhood celebrations can shape our creative futures. Memories of large family weddings in Dhaka have really stayed with the award-winning architect Marina Tabassum, whose work plays with ideas of light, place and culture. And the colourful canopy, which features in many South Asian festivities, the Shamiana still remains in her creative imagination.

2:24Marina Tabassum:So my memory of being in a Shamiana is my uncle's wedding. Shamiana's basically covered temporary spaces which are created with bamboo structures and then fabric as a roof. You see this beautiful light coming through this gorgeous, colourful fabric of this pavilion, and that memory sort of is always there at the back of your mind. And even till date, you know, if you go to the villages, you'll still see that gorgeous shamianas being used for weddings and also for religious gatherings. And so I wanted to bring that culture to London and the park.

3:04Erika Wright:Marina Tabassam's architecture practice is based in Bangladesh and she was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in 2024. That park Marina's brought her creativity to is London's Kensington Gardens. Every year the prestigious Serpentine Gallery invites a world renowned architect to design a temporary space for summertime use. Now in its 25th year, this highly prized commission has been awarded to Marina, who is known for designing mosques, museums and refuge spaces in Bangladesh, a country challenged by climate insecurity. The Serpentine Pavilion is seen as a global opportunity for experimentation and creativity.

4:00Erika Wright:So I'm jumping on my bike to meet Marina and see her new design, called A Capsule in Time. So I've just passed Buckingham Palace on the cusp of London's Royal Parks. The Serpentine Lake is to my right. You can probably hear the geese. There's lots of runners, other cyclists, dog walkers. It's very busy. Roses are in bloom. just going uphill. The Prince Albert Memorial is close by in all its golden colours. And now I can see the Serpentine Gallery up ahead.

4:42Marina Tabassum:We are here in front of the Serpentine Pavilion. Welcome. Is this the first time that you've seen it? You know, I've been here for site visits. So now when I come here, it's a few days before the opening, actually.

4:55Erika Wright:There's still a few finishing touches going on behind us.

4:57Marina Tabassum:Yeah, and this time to see it more or less in full shape, it's a space which has a spirit of its own.

5:05Erika Wright:To me, as I stand in front of it, it is this amazing dome-shaped, almost shell-like. I feel like it's from both the sea and yet it's a capsule in time, so it's also to do with space.

5:18Marina Tabassum:You know, it's interesting. I don't know. I mean, when we started, it was basically a capsule. That's what we thought of. But it has these four elements, the two half domes and then these two arches. And because of the use of these translucent panels, which actually lets the light through into the space, gives it a very ethereal kind of a sense. So we were discussing after this was built that is it a church? I can imagine that is a possibility because I've designed mosques. You know, I'm an architect who has always been very drawn to the sense of spirituality. And I think light really helps.

5:58Erika Wright:Because as the light is coming through the panels, the translucent panels above us, it feels like dancing almost. It feels very musical with the light dancing around us. It's like it could be a big rock stage.

6:10Marina Tabassum:It could easily be anything. You know, it's all up to your imagination. and the light as the sun changes and the clouds are coming over it so the light would become subdued and then all of a sudden it will have this burst of colours and at the same time the park is surrounded by so much of trees and the colours of the trees are also coming through so it's a very colourful space within it So you're using light almost as a material then? I always use light as a material I think light, air, these are things that you get for free and quite often ignored. And for me, especially in Bangladesh, where I practice, it's a very tropical climate.

6:52Marina Tabassum:And for us, openness is very important. And so even in our architecture, we try to open up as much as possible so the inside and outside is always blended together. And in a pavilion here in London in a summer month, with the play of light, you don't just sit there, but you also enjoy the park, the sun, the nature. It's a very inclusive space. It is a very inclusive space. You know, there's so much of diversity. London brings in so many people who are living here, also from abroad, and they can all come here with all their uniqueness.

7:23Erika Wright:And it's very open. You can move in and out. It feels quite relaxed. It does, yeah. And centre stage between the two half domes, you've placed a single tree.

7:34Marina Tabassum:So it's a beautiful ginkgo tree, which we sourced, actually. This is one of the oldest trees in the world, which is living.

7:42Erika Wright:You're playing with ideas of time there. Yeah, absolutely.

7:45Marina Tabassum:And the reason we chose it was it's a very resilient tree, that it has a good synergy with all the other trees in the park, so the plant community actually accepts it as their own. Beautiful fan-shaped leaf, which is very sculptural, and slowly turns into yellow towards the autumn. And it's a piece of the pavilion that will find a space in the parks after October when the pavilion is taken down, and it will have its own life. And then the memories, even though the pavilion doesn't remain on site, the memories of being here will remain. So that's why I call it a capsule in time, because architecture is always created or has been created to last time.

8:26Marina Tabassum:Pavilion doesn't do that. Pavilions are temporary structures. It's there for a certain period of time, and then it's gone. And I thought, you know, it's a pavilion in London, whereas my memory of a pavilion is a shamiana. How can I bring these two memories together? That was the inspiration for the light and the colours that are coming through into the space. And the temporary nature of it? Absolutely, yes, because those are temporary buildings. This again has that temporal quality to it, so that's the connection between the two.

9:00Erika Wright:By day, the Serpentine Pavilion is a meeting place where people can connect, enjoy family time, have a coffee or simply savour the space. By night, it's a venue for public entertainments, including art, music, dance, literature, highlighting emerging artists. Bringing the new design to life, over a matter of months, to a tight deadline, is a team effort. The first pavilion was designed 25 years ago by the late Iraqi-British architect Dame Zaha Hadid, and since then, a manufacturing company based in the north of England has worked on many of them, and from pop concerts to the Olympics they know a thing or two about creating events.

9:44Erika Wright:My name is Tim Lee and I'm the Chief Creative Officer at Stage 1 Creative Services. We are lucky enough to have worked in I think 52 different countries around the world whether it's rock and roll for example two years ago we built the set for Ed Sheeran's Mathematics Tour we're currently working on the Winter Olympics in Milan next year so it's actually quite nice to build something in our back garden. Here in London. You have also done Adele in your back garden, as you described it, here in the Royal Parks. We have, yes. Several years ago we built a stage lift for Adele as part of the British summertime concerts.

10:19Erika Wright:We work across a huge range of disciplines. And when we first see the architect's design intent, it takes many forms. It could be a sketch on a napkin. And that's the most exciting time for me in the process because that's the genesis of the idea. And it's quite alarming sometimes because you think, how on earth are we going to do it? but we have to hold our nerve and we have to think that wow we've delivered 16 of these pavilions so we will find a way. So the capsule in time has curved rib-like arches made out of supremely beautiful wood it looks like they're pristinely precise how have you managed that?

10:56Erika Wright:So to create the ribs we set up on the floor of our workshops and the timber is bent around to create the curves we glue all of this up and wait for the glue to cure and we're holding this all in place with sash clamps then the curve is retained. So it's very much a hands-on process. Absolutely a hands-on process and in fact when we first approached this we thought maybe we would have to use lots of machinery to do this but in actual fact it really is a manual process and there's something quite charming about that. And centre focus is the ginkgo tree known as a fossil tree because it outlived the dinosaurs.

11:31Erika Wright:Yeah, the ginkgo tree at the centre is remarkable. When I was a small boy, I always wanted to plant a tree inside of my house. And this is probably the closest I've ever got. I planted a tree in somebody else's house. It's a pavilion, but you're describing it as a house, it's a home, it's a dwelling. Yeah, and actually it's the perfect day because the glazing panels almost forms a stained glass window. I'm not sure that was ever what Marina set out to do, but there are absolutely references in my own mind now to something that feels like a cathedral. Church-like. It really does, yeah. And we're lucky here to be sat within the Royal Parks.

12:10Erika Wright:Parakeets flying over. It's lovely to hear the parakeets. You're listening to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service with me, Erica Wright. As well as running a busy architecture practice in Bangladesh, Marina Tabasam is a professor of architectural design for climate adaptation at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. So where is Marina Tabasam's creative space?

12:41Marina Tabassum:The studio for me is in Bangladesh, in Dhaka. It's a residential area called Danmundi. It's a small office. We have altogether never more than 12 to 15 people. and it's run as a studio actually. You know I'm the principal architect but at the same time I have a lot of architects working with me so we together are working model making everything goes on in that same space so I like to call it a studio rather than an office. It's a creative place. It's a creative place yes.

13:15Erika Wright:And so when you have an idea how does that begin? Does it begin on laptops or I'm imagining drawing boards and rulers and sketches?

13:24Marina Tabassum:Well, when we have a project, initially there is no idea. So the idea started from the moment you visit a site. Also, a lot of research goes on in terms of what is the building all about. So also we engage a lot with the community, especially people who will be using the end users, even before designing anything. I'm trying to envision how people will be using the spaces. So for me, those visions are quite important also. I want to make it very experiential. So the experiences one feels in a building is very much more important than what it looks like from outside.

14:06Erika Wright:You're very emotional.

14:07Marina Tabassum:In a way, I would think so, yeah. So it's always about trying to create a vision in my mind to understand what people will feel. And slowly it starts to come together. and that's when the first ideas start to formulate. And the first ideas are always in sketches.

14:26Erika Wright:Is sketching something you've always done?

14:28Marina Tabassum:Sketching is something I've always done from childhood, yes. Initially it started by copying other drawings, which I really liked, because it made me feel happy. Then slowly I started developing my own way of doing sketches.

14:43Erika Wright:So how do you get that vision from your head? You're talking about this happening in your mind. How do you get that down onto paper?

14:49Marina Tabassum:Yes, so you have this vision that you want a certain kind of journey that you want people to come through. So initially the drawings are just very basic layering of blobs, which I don't even know. And then slowly you have a certain language of architecture that every architect has. And for me it's always about geometry. So I try to put geometry into that. And so that expression starts to take shape.

15:12Erika Wright:Essentially you should say that because the mosque-like nature of the capsule in time, the interconnecting panels, they're like cells from nature almost.

15:21Marina Tabassum:You know, I think this whole design actually generated from this idea of being in a park. And this shape that you see, the arched shapes, relates to these beautiful archways that actually leads you through to different spaces where you have vines and trees growing. So that kind of gardening, kiosks and things like that. It's a very geometric space. It's a very pure geometry, half dome and arches. But then once you bring them together with the material, nature, light and all that surrounding it, it actually becomes this beautiful, much more complex space.

16:00Erika Wright:And one of the unique complexities of this year's pavilion in London's Kensington Gardens is that the sides of a capsule in time move. It's designed for large gatherings of more than 200 people, but British summer weather being far from reliable, Marina has created a space that adapts, expanding and contracting, almost as if its wooden rib-like arches are breathing. And that motion involves some tricky engineering. My name's John Leach. I'm director for ACOM, the engineering designer for the project. It includes the maths behind the design. The hard bit. Well, I like to say it's the hard bit. It includes the structure, making sure fundamentally it stands up and it's safe.

16:43Erika Wright:One part of the capsule is designed to move. Basically a whole series of the arches sit on some rails, and a lot of those engineering bits are quite hidden from view. We wanted to keep the purity of Marina's design, really, and the idea is that the whole part of the building slides together like a clamshell and gives the serpentine the ability to create different types of event spaces for different functions. So that's definitely been quite challenging. It is like a clamshell. Yeah. You've worked on Summer Pavilion since 2013. How does a project like this, which is quite intimate, set in the Royal Parks, compare to some of the other bigger international projects that you've done?

17:22Erika Wright:It happens so quick that we tend to compare it with a sculpture. Once you've started the creative process, you can't really go backwards. And ultimately, it has to be built on time. It's like a live event. You know, the event will happen. I've worked on a number of airports, stadia, that kind of scale of projects. You can be working on them for 10 years and you never see a result. This is obviously famously very short. It's really good for our younger engineers. We've had a lot of engineers who have really cut their teeth on this project. They see it for real. They can see exactly what they're contributing.