Bangladeshi Architect Marina Tabassum won prestigious architecture award Soane Medal 2021.

Sir John Soane’s Museum in London handed over the award on Tuesday.

She is the first architect from the global south to have won the prestigious medal.

Receiving the Award at a ceremony celebrating her career, Marina Tabassum gave the fourth Soane Medal Lecture before an invited audience in the Museum and a global audience through a live digital event.

Marina Tabassum said: “I am honoured to have been chosen to receive this recognition from such a distinguished institution as the Soane Museum. Winning the Soane Medal means a great deal to me. My current work is focused on the twin crises of Bangladesh: the plight of refugees, and the heightened threat to our population of flooding, exacerbated by global warming. Both factors have led me to focus on prototyping low impact, mobile housing which can be delivered at the lowest cost possible for those in need. Our goal is to make it an open source knowledge that can help people build their own houses, with the help of a manual with detailed instructions.”

Marina Tabassum, aged 53, was born, lives and works in Dhaka. She is Founder and Principal Architect of Marina Tabassum Architects MTA in Dhaka and is a pioneer of what she describes as ‘the architecture of relevance’.