Biennial of Thought
A Morning with Marina Tabassum
Debate + Education
In this session with secondary school students, Marina Tabassum will talk about her life and her career. She trained as an architect in Bangladesh and her international success represents an outstanding professional achievement in an unstable context marked by war, the partition of Bengal, and the shaping of the state of Bangladesh.
Marina Tabassum grew up in Bangladesh during the convulsive years in which Bangladesh gained independence. Schooled in the stories of the Indian diaspora, and raised in the post-war years, she has contributed to the transformation of her country with her architecture.
She has achieved international renown with her projects which combine architectural innovation with the history and nature of the places where her buildings are constructed. She has focused on projects in the land of her birth, Bangladesh, on the premise that the architects can only innovate if they know and give continuity to the history of the space where they are working.
She has received major awards for her work, including the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the 2001 Architect of the Year prize in New Delhi. Marina Tabassum’s prestige is even more exceptional when one considers that there are fewer than twenty women working as architects in Bangladesh. She has taught in courses and lectured at Dhaka, Harvard and Newcastle universities and is also Director of the Academic Programme at the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements in Dhaka.
Prior registration is required for this event which is addressed to secondary school students.
Participants: Marina Tabassum, Igor G. Barbero
This activity is part of Open City Thinking Biennale 2018, Talks for secondary students, Biennial of Thought