Ramadan Pavilion: Audio Description

Ramadan Pavilion 2025. Bradford City of Culture, 2025. Commissioned by The Ramadan Tent Project and Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, designed by the artist Zara Hussain and architectural designer Fatima Majbiel.

First some history. The Ramadan Pavilion 2025. Is the second edition of the prestigious purpose built architectural structure and showpiece of creative art and design that celebrates the holy month of Ramadan.

The aim of the biennial Ramadan Pavilion is to celebrate the lived experiences of Muslims across the UK and around the globe during the holiest month of the Islamic calendar, and to bring attention to the intersection of the core values and traditions of Ramadan through architectural expression and experimentation.

The inaugural Ramadan Pavilion 2023 was displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London, designed by Shahed Salim.

The Ramadan Pavilion 2025 is the focal point of a series of public events, including open Iftar as part of the Ramadan Festival, curated by the Ramadan Tent Project and presented in Bradford this year in partnership with Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.

It was unveiled on Saturday 15 February, and you can visit it for free throughout Ramadan. The theme of Ramadan Festival 2025 is connection.

This second edition of the Ramadan Pavilion, named Infinite Light, is a striking double archway structure drawing on diverse architectural traditions from around the world. The lower arch takes inspiration from the elegant colonnaded courtyards often found in sacred and civic spaces, such as those surrounding the holy sanctuary at Mecca, built in the 16th century. The higher arch is influenced by the pointed and ornate forms of Venetian Gothic architecture as found in Bradford’s own city hall, completed in the 1870s by local architect Henry Francis Lockwood. Archways, historically used to connect the material and spiritual realms serve as the Pavilion’s core motif embodying the essence of connection by uniting the architectural language of Bradford’s Victorian heritage with the sacred geometry of Islamic design.

The Ramadan Pavilion 2025 creates a striking space that resonates with the city’s diverse communities and reflects its cultural vibrancy. This is also reflected in the way the arches illuminate the pavilion as the sun sets in line with the breaking of fast during Ramadan.

To describe the structure in greater detail, it is positioned directly in front of the main entrance to the city hall, forming a corridor that echoes the shape of the wrought iron gates. It is about the size of a single decker bus parked lengthways. From this angle, we are faced by one of the double archways. The lower arch is formed by vertical pillars to shoulder height before creating an almost semicircular arch above our heads. The higher arch starts from the same vertical pillars, but then creates a hands with wider arc above its sister arch. This second arch, instead of being a natural full curve, reaches a pointed peak at its central apex.

Beyond this initial double archway, there are six further double archways spaced equally apart. The effect caused by perspective suggests the archways get smaller and smaller when in fact, they are uniform in size. If you were to approach the structure from one of its long sides, you also find six double archways placed side by side, and these form the walls of the initial corridor. Therefore, if we were suspended above the structure, the shape formed would be a rectangle where its length was six times its width. The shape formed is also open plan and invites you to move around the pillars. There is no roof to connect all the archways.

In daylight, the colour of the arches is a vibrant, hot fuchsia pink. This serves to counterpoint the neutral grey and brown sandstone of the building and paving in which it finds itself, the space between the higher and lower arches are then shaded in a calming cyan blue.

The surfaces of the archways are smooth in texture. At first it seems that the structure is made of metal, but a knock from the knuckle confirms that it is made of wood. If you visit the structure at sunset or later, the double archways are illuminated by strip lighting around the curves above our heads. The lighting is a warm white and causes an arresting effect from a distance, even beyond Centenary Square.

The Ramadan Tent Project hopes to bring about community connection through its events and bring people of different faiths, no faiths and background. Together with the Ramadan Pavilion, they have formed a space for reflection which encourages everyone to step in and under these archways.

Audio described by Bradford 2025 community trainee team.