Suhailey Farzana
Suhailey Farzana is a community architect. Her interest is to understand and explore the “co-creation” process with people through housing, craft making, or city planning. Empowering herself and others through this process is the excitement of her work. She is the co-founder of Co.Creation.Architects and Platform of Community Action and Architecture (POCAA). Suhailey is also closely involved with Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) and Community Architects Network (CAN). She pursued her Bachelor in Architecture and Masters in Development Studies from Brac University, Bangladesh. She studied leadership at the University of Vermont in the USA as a part of a learning exchange program. Co.Creation.Architects received two prestigious awards UIA 2030 Award and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for their work by the edge of the river in Jhenaidah.
As an architect, Suhailey has always had the knack to make herself useful to the people, specially to the ones who cannot afford to avail architects’ service. The search has led her to work and live in Jhenaidah where she had the opportunity to work as a community, alongside architects, residents of the city, various groups of people, city authorities, children, women, elderly, national and international volunteers, etc. She represents Co.Creation Architects (CCA), an architectural and landscape design studio in Jhenaidah, co-founded with Architect Khondaker Hasibul Kabir. CAA works with low-income community networks for housing, community spaces, food production, cooperative craft business, and with the citizens to co-design the city. The overarching goal of her practice is to empower the common people to participate in a design process from scratch, in order to bring out its solution as well as implementation. For her, architecture acts as an empowering tool to motivate her to co-create with the people, for the people.
With Khondaker Hasibul Kabir, Suhailey has received the prestigious UIA 2030 award and Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2022 for their noteworthy community-driven project that provides public spaces in the riverine city of Jhenaidah with 250,000 residents.
Publications
- “A survey of the built environment in two Dhaka Bustees”, ClimUrb Project,
The University of Manchester (with S. Chowdhury, I. Shahriar, Kabir, K.H. and F. H. Mallick) https://www.gov.uk/dfid-research-outputs/a-survey-of-the-built-environme... bustees-lotabel-and-shandekka
- “We grow Together” By Suhailey Farzana
http://communityarchitectsnetwork.info/openSource_publication-iss.php?ic...(page 04)
- “O City, what do you want to be?” Understanding what cities want through co creation with Emerald Upoma Baidya and Nazia Roushan
https://theccd.org/articles/o-city-what-do-you-want-be-understanding-wha... through-co-creation
- “The Essential Questions for Us as Architects” with Khondaker Hasibul Kabir http://www.achr.net/upload/downloads/file_25112019122445.pdf (page 6)
Awards
- Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 2022, Urban River Spaces (with architect Khondaker Hasibul Kabir)
- UIA 2030 Award for Architecture, 2022, ‘Co-creation of Urban Spaces by the Naboganga River in Jhenaidah City’ as a team member of CCA (Co.Creation.Architects)
- Berger-IAB Young Architects Award, 2017 in Multi-family residence category, for designing “Citywide Community Housing Process in Jhenaidah” (in a team with other community architects of Co.Creation.Architects and POCAA)
- Honorable Mention in INTBAU Excellence Awards 2018 as part of Co.Creation.Architects
The School of Architecture and Design (SoAD) is proud to have alumni out there in the world making a difference and creating an impact. We would like to share their achievements with our community, particularly our students, so that they find inspiration in them to reach the heights of their own potential.