Bangladesh’s chars are a landscape of constantly shifting rivers and sandbars with a population of people living in a permanent state of precarity. Aggravated by climate change, the annual monsoons and river erosion bring frequent floods that destroy homes and livelihoods. In 2018, a self-initiated research project by Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA) into land rights led them to these agrarian communities, and sparked the idea of creating a flexible, affordable, self-build housing solution adapted to their needs. And so the Khudi Bari – Bengali for “Little House” – was born, through extensive consultation with char community members.

Its simple, space-frame structure using chevron-braced bamboo is joined together with specially designed steel connectors fabricated in a Dhaka foundry that has a long working association with the architects. The upper storey, essential to ensure storage and sleeping space even during floods, has front and rear openings for cross ventilation. The roof is of corrugated tin produced in Chittagong – chosen by the community in preference over thatch, for its durability and reusability. Wood-framed panels are provided for the upper facade, while the lower walls are left to the owner-users’ initiative: from grasses or sticks to jute fabric or salvaged corrugated metal sheets. Allocated by the communities themselves to those in greatest need, the basic Khudi Bari kits cost the equivalent of only US$450 – a fraction of the roughly US$2,500 starting price of commonly available wooden prefabricated houses already being produced in Dhaka.

Ongoing monitoring assesses the structures’ performance over time, and MTA established the non-profit Foundation for Architecture and Community Equity (FACE) to facilitate their take-up. By early 2025, over seventy-eight structures had been erected at various locations. Owners attest that they fulfil their promise of being buildable within three days and dismantlable within three hours. Some have already withstood several cycles of flooding and/or removal to new sites.

MTA have also successfully scaled up the modular system to create several strikingly and thoughtfully designed women-led or women-oriented facilities in Bangladesh’s vast Rohingya refugee camps, whose predominantly Muslim communities have fled persecution in neighbouring Myanmar.

Fast-growing and abundantly available across Bangladesh, the bamboo is treated in the char communities by soaking in water for twenty-four hours. In the Rohingya camps, it is treated with borax and boric acid to protect against fungal decay and insect infestation, in a special facility created by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Jury citation

“The Khudi Bari project has been granted the Award for developing a flexible system that addresses global challenges with vernacular solutions, reframed through a contemporary lens to evolve and scale up so as to deliver a wider, regional impact.

Based on a module of elementary geometry, its rationalisation – paired with the adaptation of vernacular bamboo techniques – puts humanity before aesthetics, and it is humble enough to allow for an open-source use that enables communities to build and localise by themselves. Its easy and rapid deployment and disassembly provide an engaging solution for the nomadic condition of the climate-displaced communities in the flood-plains of Bangladesh, for whom it was first designed, already impacting the lives of hundreds of families.

As it grows into larger-scale communal projects, the Khudi Bari maintains the simplicity of its structure while still delivering grace and beauty, reminding us that design for survival doesn’t exclude architectural quality. Thanks to the flexibility and open-endedness of its geometry, the design allows for the individual module to scale from a single shelter into collective communal buildings, widening its impact from personal dignity to social infrastructure, in the form of classrooms, community kitchens, and humanitarian aid centres.

The project has a deep ecological framing, contributing to the global advancement of bamboo as a material. A living, regenerative resource widely available across the Bamboo Belt in the Global South, it is increasingly being adopted as perception changes from that of a precarious material to a viable, scalable, sustainable solution, delivering value that goes beyond style.

Clear and powerful architectural ideas have the possibility to reach and inspire others worldwide, but then have to be downloaded into specific contexts to be built with local resources. Ideas can and should go global, but materials need to stay local.

The Khudi Bari project is profoundly optimistic, as it reframes the role that architecture can and should play in times of difficult global realities – as a hopeful, actionable, and human-centred solution that is grounded and systemic.”

Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture