Rana Plaza Memorial City

Yale University, School of Architecture (YSOA)

Project idea

The city of Dhaka, Bangladesh, is not a traditional city with a defined core and periphery, but rather a collection of centers consisting of large-scale institutional and manufacturing districts. The typical factory complex in Dhaka is poorly planned, colliding with the informal settlements that grow around it and leaving no room for public life. Because of the large number of factories that make up the fabric of the city, the factory is an ideal type to introduce a sense of monumentality and civic identity.

Project description

This proposal is located in the garment-producing suburb of Savar, at the site of the tragic Rana Plaza factory collapse that occurred in April 2013 and claimed over 1200 lives. The excavated foundations of the collapsed building are repurposed as a sunken memorial space, and a grand civic axis connects this memorial site to an existing temple complex to the east.

Technical information

30,000sm of housing and 16,000sm of factories over 27,000sm of land

Co-authors

Solo project