A Capsule in Time

Ellie Stathaki: Congratulations on the pavilion! I know it was your first build in London. Did you explore anything new with it, in terms of materials or techniques?
Marina Tabassum: For us, wooden construction was a new area of exploration. Bending laminated wood to achieve the right diameter of the arches was a novel technique for us. The kinetic aspect of the movable piece is also something new for the Serpentine. I would have loved to use laminated jute for the façade, but due to fire regulations, we could not move forward with that.

I imagine all these new explorations ultimately add to your studio’s knowledge bank. Do you see your projects as connected to each other? Is the pavilion part of a bigger journey?
The Serpentine is not a one-off thing. I once designed a brick house with a similar idea of a capsule, inspired by the brick kiln construction technique, but it never got built. We architects have these unrealised ghosts of ideas that keep haunting us until there’s some form of manifestation.

I see architecture as a journey in life. I learn and unlearn. I have had encounters and mentors that have enriched my journey. Self-critiquing when needed. I see it as a flowing river. There are unknowns and every project is a bend that allows us to explore new horizons and becomes part of that journey – a continuity.

So, each design might provide a learning curve, in its own way. Did the pavilion offer learnings too?
London was uncharted territory. From the design process to construction, it was quite different to the way we work in Bangladesh. There, the design phase rolls on to the construction phase. In London, we had to take every decision before the pavilion design was submitted for the building permit. The process is much more linear, whereas ours is more collaborative.

[It also helped me see how] space has a universal appeal to humans, despite their gender, race, ethnicity or background. I derived my language of architecture from geometry, which is also universal. I’ve noticed visitors’ behaviour and mode of expression when they enter the pavilion. In most cases, they are drawn into the space. They sit for some moments, observing and being part of a union. It’s an expression very similar to what I observe among visitors to the Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka. That for me is a realisation.

Are such realisations something you look forward to? What excites you about a new project?
The challenges of a project excite me. I look for a narrative as a starting point to guide my thinking. That’s why design research, the site itself, the context and the people are so important to me at the beginning. A few things are constant: the exploration of space and how people engage in the spaces and the atmosphere. The material, language of architecture, light, texture, colour, everything is decided keeping the focus on the experiential journey of the user.