Marina Tabassum Architects

Marina Tabassum has completed a beautiful mosque in Bait Ur Rouf, in Dhaka, Bangladesh as well as a number of other highly crafted, sophisticated and striking buildings. She has chosen for this Biennale Architettura to present a component of her work which gives an in-depth insight into building vernacular and habitation structures focussing on the Bengali Courtyard.
Working with communities whose monthly income is less than 100 dollars, Marina Tabassum Architects is currently working on making homes for 2000 dollars in collaboration with community architects group POCAA. She explores the existence of FREESPACE within the organic morphology of the Bengali courtyards and documents the daily life of these communities. She records their techniques of space making, of creating enclosures and of creating a sense of community. It is an ever-changing adaptable architecture which at the same time is precisely attuned to the lives of the inhabitants. This process of keen, sensitive, patient observation allows the architect to make thoughtful minimal interventions.
Architecture is made in a modest way in the absence of prescriptive impositions or design solutions. This process recalls Luis Barragán’s statement that architects need to “see with innocence”. Seeing with innocence and curiosity we believe is the key to the architect finding a solution which is not pre-determined but comes out of consultation and mutual respect, often leading to wonderful results, unexpected by either the architect or the user.
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