Marina Tabassum

The architect Marina Tabassum received the medal through which Sir John Soane’s Museum in London acknowledges the efforts of people who through the profession, education, and history and theory have “furthered and enriched the public understanding of architecture.” She is the fourth Soane medallist, after Rafael Moneo in 2017, Denise Scott Brown in 2018, and Kenneth Frampton in 2019. The accolade is given in the same event as a Soane Medal Lecture, held in the British capital, which this time took place on 17 November 2021 with David Chipperfield in attendance. Born in Dhaka (Bangladesh) in 1969, Tabassum opened her office there in 1990 and devoted herself to an architecture much in keeping with the local context and climate, in addition to harnessing artisanal materials and techniques and using them with a high social awareness. All this without deviating from a strong commitment to a language of powerfully abstract forms, patent in buildings like the Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka and interventions like those she has carried out in Rohingya refugee camps in southeast Bangladesh.