In a recent address, Bangladesh architect Marina Tabassum revealed that the first confrontation of her professional life was witnessing the commodifying of architecture drifting toward instant gratification and industrial-scale materials devised to standardise the entire globe.

This may be why her work is so grounded in the practical needs of the people of her country who are on the frontier of climate change and displacement of peoples it brings.

Marina starts by describing the natural forces that are continuing to shape Bangladesh thanks to more than 700 rivers that form the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta. We hear that water shapes and reshapes the terrain - giving rise to new land while absorbing other land back into the vast waterscape of this delta…and all under a colonial system of property rights that assumes land is a fixed asset!

Marina Tabassum joined Rick Joy, Marusa Zorec, Niall McLaughlin, Peter Stutchbury and four others in a driving epic over three weeks across the rich, remote Australian desert landscape; before speaking at an event called Stories of Earth: Echoes in Architecture, hosted by the Murcutt Foundation in September 2024.

Marina starts us out on that journey; showing us a swag, a pair of boots, a water bottle…and the milky way that she saw for the first time.

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