Written by:
Guest Author
By Sohana Khan
I was raised in a small town in Tangail, Bangladesh, where I always felt curiosity in my veins. I was a curious child and while I always wanted to know more, I carried stories and dreams like stones in my pocket, weighty, grounding, always with me. My passion towards community, art and social change started forming in high school. I found community architecture in my undergraduate studies at BRAC University in Dhaka. At one of the Rohingya refugee camps where I worked with Oxfam in 2018, I was able to design WASH facilities especially meant to benefit women and children, a project that changed everything I knew about how architecture can help solve crises.
Since then, I have worked collaboratively with the BRAC Institute of Educational Development, British Council and architectural companies and the architects who I admire most, Yasmeen Lari, with a humanitarian effort that led to the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 2023. The commitment to people-centred architecture by Yasmeen prompted me to take a step back, think, and pose the right questions: why are communities excluded, and what can architecture do? This methodology, and my questions, followed me to London South Bank University where I did M.Arch as a student representative. My dissertation topic was on the idea of Empowering Marginalized Communities via Adaptable Community Platforms in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Why Placemaking Matters in Bangladesh
Curiosity is influenced by lines of perception. At the BRAC University (B.Arch), I studied on the 12th floor in Mohakhali. Through the window I had a view of two lives bitterly contrasted, separated only by one thin canal. To the right sat Gulshan, one of the richest neighbourhoods of the city of Dhaka, where there were posh shopping malls, corporate offices and gated houses. The other side was Korail, the biggest informal settlement within the city, where families struggled every day just to get clean water, electricity, safe roads and proper houses.
I used to spend hours looking at the contrast between the high-rises and the low tin-roofed houses. I even put questions to myself repeatedly: why are these communities that are so geographically close so inaccessible to each other? Why does progress adopt one, leave the other aside? Then came the question which transformed me, what can I do with it?
This question became a constant companion throughout my academic and professional journey.
A community centre is a concept which is quite familiar all over the world, whereas in Bangladesh it is more of a visionary concept: the notion of a community centre is a synonym to unity of a society, provision of the basic needs, and promotion of improvement in their lives in general. However, quite a number of these centres are either expensive, inaccessible or lacking co-existence with the needs of the individuals they claim to be dealing with. Real places of communal life are hard to find comprehensive, practical, connected to the life of a neighbourhood. They are too easily relegated to the status of pretty city ornaments rather than places to dwell in as full and active communities.
The Right to the City written by Henri Lefebvre reminds us that cities are not supposed to be about profit but rather about the people. But in Dhaka, Chattogram and Khulna, I have seen how the city is becoming built by capital instead of caring. The informal settlements grow, and the dwellers in them are never consulted when critical decisions affecting their lives are made. Their social spaces become small or non-existent. Still, I think architecture can come into play, not by putting up on top of people, but by designing with people. Placemaking, guided by concepts of empathy, participation and justice, has the instruments to overcome these gaps to redefine the city as a communal space, once again.
Toward Participatory, Adaptive Design
Some underlying problems were found in the design practice of the largest informal settlement in the Dhaka city, Korail: ineffective usage, inadequate maintenance, marginalization, and both the absence of community ownership and government refusal of supporting policy. With the participatory mapping between the local people, local NGOs, and planners, we started to discover the latent potential the local populations harbour, the thriving pockets of social energy, creativity, and a true desire to cooperate.
With this knowledge in mind, I envisioned modular, climate-responsive buildings that could be self-formed into community structures, learning pods with children, women-operated kiosks, and open courtyards where the community could come together, share, and heal. These settings were not only functional, but also representative with locally available, affordable and sustainable materials being used in the construction. It is however not just about structure. It is an appeal to the hybrid coalitions with mixed sectorality of the government, corporate interests, and non-governmental organizations to give it long-term sustainability. I will make use of worldwide precedents in my research, such as models of UN-Habitat and grassroots design labs and set them in dialogue with local tradition and spatial justice theory. It gives primacy to the voices of women, the youth, the urban poor, not only to the right of access to space but the right to control the space.
To the Next Generation of Placemakers
Start your processes of designing spaces with questions: who are the spaces really made by? What have they already learned? Who is in control and who is not? Spaces are not neutral as they are political, emotional, and lived. They are influenced by bureaucracy, land rights, gender codes, religious limits, and even dreams that people can have.
My personal experience, having moved back and forth between Tangail and the Rohingya camps, the slums of Dhaka, and now to London, has taught me one lower case: The highest forms of architecture are not to be created by ego but rather through empathy. Through deep listening, being a co-designer and being humble. The healer places do not come with wood or brick and earth, they come with respect, resilience and shared vision. And whatever you plan in Rio or Rohingya or in the UK, you must never cease to ask those questions which will reveal the soul of the place. Build alongside the communities, not on them. And don’t forget: placemaking is not really a project, but a practice. Peace, collaboration, risk, and wonder are the strongest materials you’ll find when shaping places with communities, though they may never appear on architectural drawings.
Sohana Khan is a Bangladeshi architect currently based in London. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from BRAC University (2022) and a Master of Architecture from London South Bank University (2025). She works at ‘Article 25’ in London and practices community-led architecture in Bangladesh, focusing on spatial justice, wellbeing, and participatory design in marginalised urban contexts.