$2000 Home: Cocreating in the Bengal Delta

The Bengal Delta is defined by the fluidity and chemistry of land and water. As the confluence of the mighty rivers Padma and Jamuna, the fragile soft soil of the delta is in constant flux.

This area is home to the 150 million people of Bangladesh.

Their lives tell stories of negotiation, adaptation, and appropriation. In Marina Tabassum’s fall 2017 design studio, Harvard GSD students encountered five such stories after meeting families living in Taherpur and Modonpur, two villages located in the Jessore district in southern Bangladesh. $2000 Home: Cocreating in the Bengal Delta features proposals for domestic spaces, designed specifically for one of the five families.

Pursuing architecture in such a landscape requires understanding impermanence and embracing informality. The act of architecture becomes a search for innovative and creative ways of defining life with minimal means that goes beyond space and form.

$2000 Home: Cocreating in the Bengal Delta is a Studio Report from the Fall 2017 semester at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Published by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, forthcoming Winter 2019.

Instructed by Marina Tabassum

Series design by Zak Jensen & Laura Grey; report design by Mahmuda Alam

136 pages, softcover, 17 x 24.5 cm
ISBN 978-1-934510-72-8

Soon available for purchase from the Frances Loeb Library and Amazon.com