A sanctuary of stillness, the pavilion reimagines rest as a radical, collective act of resistance, rebellion and reclamation. Drawing on the idea of “solitude as power”, it celebrates the quiet dignity of the Bajan people.

Rather than reenact suffering, it centers Black Caribbean presence through sensory calm, material memory, and cultural abstraction. At the heart of The Stillness Ring is a spatial re-centering of the Caribbean body, not as subject to trauma but as the bearer of ancestral calm, craft, and spiritual presence.

The Stillness Ring resists the traditional spatial violence of colonial architecture by embracing African spatial logic, which privileges rhythm, relation, and circularity. Instead of enforcing order, it invites gathering.

The circular form is not just symbolic, it is functional resistance. It dissolves hierarchy, allowing all who enters to be on equal footing. You arrive not at a podium but a center of calm.

The rhythm of locally sourced repetitive wooden ribs, layered thresholds, breathing gaps, is architecture of the drum, of the tide, of ritual. The central oculus draws participants into an upward, contemplative collective state of stillnes and it also allows them to experience their reflection and bodies in this state. It says, we remember spaces where power flowed horizontally, not vertically. Spaces where the community pulsed together. Spaces where time followed the moon and not the empire's bell.

In replacing rigidity with rhythm, The Stillness Ring becomes a spatial act of decolonization. 

The Stillness Ring was presented as part of Adjaye Associates and Barbados Government International Architecture Competition for Temporary Pavilion at CARIFESTA XV, June 2025.