Recap of Water Preparedness: Designing Climate ResilienceRecap of Water Preparedness: Designing Climate Resilience

The week-long programme brought together students, professionals and researchers specialising in architecture, urbanism, climate and water studies. Activities included site visits, hands-on workshops, professional roundtables and a public keynote lecture.

A central aim was to engage a younger generation of designers – particularly students from the EXTREME Architecture master's programme at TU Delft – with architectural approaches that challenge Western-centric building models and prioritise social and environmental justice.

The event was grounded in the working methods and case studies of Yasmeen Lari and Marina Tabassum. While both have pioneered the application of architecture to natural disasters and the needs of vulnerable communities, Lari’s long-standing work has been an inspiration to younger practitioners, including Tabussum.

On 19 February, an afternoon workshop on water preparedness was held at the Future Studio Oostkop of the Nieuwe Instituut. Led by Yasmeen Lari, Marina Tabassum and Alankrita Sarkar, the workshop presented three case studies of water preparedness from Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Flemish-Dutch Delta.

Participants included TU Delft EXTREME students, Nieuwe Instituut staff and invited guests, bringing together architects, designers, artists, researchers, supporting institutions and community leaders. The workshop aimed to improve understanding of perspectives from the Global South and develop shared strategies for sustainable water and climate preparedness.

Yasmeen Lari presented One Eco-Street at a Time (2021), an urban project in Pakistan that improves flood resilience at street level while addressing the challenges of negotiation and ownership. Marina Tabassum described a women-led community centre in one of the world’s largest refugee camps, highlighting her approach to designing for displaced communities. Alankrita Sarkar focused on the Flemish-Dutch Delta, emphasising the climate vulnerability of port cities and their need for an adaptive, sustainable infrastructure.

The participants then formed discussion groups in order to reflect on the case studies. The workshop concluded with each group sharing potential strategies for collaboration and partnership building, as well as the key insights gained from their discussions.

On 20 February, Tabassum and Lari delivered their keynote lectures in the auditorium at the Nieuwe Instituut. Moderated by guest curator Parvinder Marwaha, this event built upon the key themes of the workshop, with a particular focus on the importance of humanistic, holistic and activist architectural approaches when working with marginalised communities facing risks such as climate change, conflict and flooding.

Aric Chen, the then General and Artistic Director of Nieuwe Instituut, introduced the event, and the lectures were followed by a panel discussion.

Keynote lecture: Marina Tabassum
Marina Tabassum described the environmental conditions in southern Bangladesh, where climate change is intensifying flooding and other water-related disasters. Her own practice focuses on supporting marginalised communities by designing resilient architecture. She presented the Khudi Bari shelter as an example of how to build resilient housing in collaboration with members of marginalised groups.

Bangladesh lies within the Ganges Delta, one of the world’s largest river deltas, which is home to around 150 million people. The Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers continually reshape the landscape, limiting habitability and displacing communities through floods or droughts. Climate change has accelerated glacier melt in the Himalayas, increasing water volumes and erosion.

In response to this, Tabassum developed the Khudi Bari shelter: a modular, affordable, lightweight and flood-resilient structure. Built from bamboo, it is designed to be mobile. The elevated structure protects against flooding, while its modular design allows for easy transportation and reconstruction. Community members were directly involved in testing, building, and refining the design.

Tabassum emphasised her community-centred methodology, which incorporated collaborative mapping, model-making workshops and community-led wealth assessments to prioritise families in the greatest need. These processes helped to ensure knowledge transfer and community ownership.

She concluded by emphasising the importance of enabling communities to continue the project independently. This approach was also adopted in later livelihood programmes for women artisans across Bangladesh, helping them to set up local and international networks to sell their products and generate income.

The project has been archived by the Vitra Campus in Germany, which commissioned a Khudi Bari shelter for its garden.

Keynote lecture: Yasmeen Lari
Yasmeen Lari reflected on her transition from corporate architecture to activist practice. After decades of working on profit-driven developments, the increasing number of climate-related disasters caused her to question the ethical responsibilities of architects. She argued that architecture should serve the common good rather than economic interests alone. Lari criticised humanitarian models that rely on international charity and high-carbon construction methods. Instead, she advocates learning from marginalised communities and collaborating with them as equal partners. She outlined three guiding frameworks:

• Decolonising – prioritising local knowledge and materials, as well as non-charity-based humanitarian models.
• Decarbonising – promoting zero-carbon structures and climate-smart technologies.
• Democratising – encouraging co-building, consensus and women-led development.

These principles informed her disaster-resilient housing prototypes in the aftermath of Pakistan’s 2010 floods. Using locally sourced materials such as lime, clay and bamboo, she created affordable, accessible and low-carbon shelters. She only expanded the programme once communities had tested and accepted the designs.

Between 2012 and 2014, around 40,000 shelters were built with the support of the International Organization for Migration. Communities were trained in construction and encouraged to strengthen local trade networks, fostering long-term independence. The later construction of 800,000 self-built earthen stoves, led by women, further demonstrated the success of this approach.

Lari concluded by emphasising that treating vulnerable populations as partners rather than as passive recipients of aid is essential for justice, resilience, and sustainable development. Her work challenges Western construction models and highlights the value of renewable materials and local knowledge.

Marina Tabassum is an architect and professor at Delft University of Technology. She founded Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA) in Dhaka, in 2005. She strives to create an architectural language that is both contemporary and strongly connected to the place, taking into account nature, climate, culture, history and the environment. Her quest for ‘architecture of relevance’ has won her several international awards.

Yasmeen Lari is Pakistan’s first female architect and ‘architect for the poorest’. Her work on affordable, sustainable, zero-carbon housing and disaster-resilient buildings for marginalised communities is groundbreaking. Her ‘barefoot social architecture’ programme aims to create a zero-donor model to lift poor communities out of the poverty trap. She co-founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, which researches and preserves the country’s architectural heritage. In 2023, she received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for her humanitarian work.

New Currents: Indian Ocean Futures is a research project by the Nieuwe Instituut that connects a global network of researchers, artists and curators. They work together to explore and map the different stories of the Indian Ocean as ‘currents’, highlighting historical legacies that are still important today. The key aim is to encourage communication and collaboration across the region.

The visits by Yasmeen Lari and Marina Tabassum were made possible with the support of Nieuwe Instituut's International Visitors Programme.