Name: Cassandre van Duinen
Track: Architecture
Studio: Global Housing
Year: MSc 3/4 / 2025
Type: Graduation Project
Tutor: Nelson Mota, Marina Tabassum, Ludovica Cassina, Antonio Paoletti
Description:
This project examines the entangled relationship between humanitarianism, colonial history, and the garment industry in Bangladesh. What began as a reflection on the ethics of foreign intervention and the power dynamics that continue to shape global labor systems evolved into a more specific exploration of housing for garment workers inside of these power dynamics. It questions how we, as outsiders, can meaningfully engage in contexts shaped by histories we did not live, but are nevertheless complicit in through the products we consume. Against this backdrop, the project focuses on the reopening of the Sylhet Textile Mill in 2026, after being abandoned for 20 years, as a site for reimagining housing for workers. Drawing from both rural housing traditions and lessons from existing factory environments, it proposes an alternative model that addresses the realistic conditions shaping workers’ lives, not as passive recipients of aid, but as people navigating a deeply uneven global system.