A publication accompanying the Serpentine Pavilion 2025 commission, ‘A Capsule in Time’, designed by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, and her studio Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA).

Tabassum aims to establish an architectural language that is contemporary while rooted and engaging with place, climate, context, culture and history. Built around a semi-mature Ginkgo tree – a climate resilient tree species that dates back to the early Jurassic Period – Tabassum’s Pavilion, like many of her previous projects, considers sustainability, and the threshold between inside and outside, the tactility of material, lightness and darkness, height and volume.

An extended visual essay by Iwan Baan opens the book, exploring the pavilion through the course of a day, highlighting the changing qualities of light and the interactions of people who are using the building.

Elements of the design echo the shaping of the structure: stepping text on the cover, sharply indenting the start of paragraphs, shifting the placement of contextual imagery across the page and cutting into essays.

Texture and scale have been carefully considered throughout the publication, from the tonally shifting, warm earthy tones of the book cloth, to the bold yellow interview pages, and the dark blue, coarse, recycled-fabric endpaper material.

Semi-transparent sheets divide and wrap sections of the book, inspired by tree canopies that filter soft daylight through their foliage. These overlay sketched explorations of the structure’s form, creating striking interventions that divide the content and show the evolution of ideas that led to the final pavilion design.

Further contributions are given by Perween Hasan, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Naeem Mohaiemen, Deborah Berke, David Chipperfield, Rana Begum and Shumon Basar, looking deeper into Tabassum’s wider practice, process, and her environmental approaches. 

The book is small format, aiming to easily integrate into the Pavilion’s internal library.