Female architect lands prize

Baitur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka. -AFP

DHAKA: As a female architect in a country where women rarely even enter mosques, Marina Tabassum was an unconventional choice to design Bangladesh’s new Baitur Rouf Mosque, which has just won a prestigious international prize.

But there is little of the conventional about Tabassum or her design, which eschews traditional minarets and domes in favour of a single-storey terracotta brick structure that is suffused with light and remains cool even in the scorching summer months.