The exhibition at the TUM Museum of Architecture presents her extremely diverse oeuvre, based in Bangladesh, which spans from governmental projects to housing. Her Bait Ur Rouf Mosque is distinguished by its lack of popular mosque iconography and its emphasis on calibrated structures of space and light. Beyond serving as a place of worship it functions equally as a refuge for a dense neighbourhood on Dhaka's periphery; for this building, Marina Tabassum won the prestigious Aga Khan Award in 2016.
The Monument and Museum of Independence (also in Dhaka) is highlighted as well, along with several key proposals as well as her engagement in various projects for the 1.2 million Rohingya refugees. In response to the dire situation of the refugees, Tabassum designed a low-cost, mobile, modular house system made of locally sourced material for landless low-income communities facing sea-level rise, once again demonstrating views of architecture as a medium to stabilise society.
The Monument and Museum of Independence (also in Dhaka) is highlighted as well, along with several key proposals as well as her engagement in various projects for the 1.2 million Rohingya refugees. In response to the dire situation of the refugees, Tabassum designed a low-cost, mobile, modular house system made of locally sourced material for landless low-income communities facing sea-level rise, once again demonstrating views of architecture as a medium to stabilise society.
“Being born and brought up in the capital city of Dhaka, my connection to the villages were few and far between. The eternal beauty of the delta land revealed herself to me only in the last decade in various projects in the Ganges Delta. I found my ‘Desh’ there, through the interactions and connections I felt with rural Bengal, the soul of the delta land. There is inherent wisdom embedded in living symbiotically with nature.”
Marina Tabassum, in her 2021 Soane Medal acceptance speech.
She continued: “The quest for my own identity — my ‘Desh’, that which I had sought since my childhood — seemed diluted within high-flying capitalist culture. The icon-mania of the super-rich and stardom of architects brought about a crisis. It is a point of crisis when an architect must decide whether to indulge in easy excitement or to choose a path of resistance.”
