Tea, candor and teaching: Aubrey’s time at BRAC
Aubrey Sanders, a Harvard-trained planner, spent his time at BRACU teaching architecture students what drawings cannot. His classes ran on role-play: students became architects, regulators, politicians, and developers, bargaining over loans and permits. Out in Merul Badda, studio courses sent them into the streets with paintbrushes to ask residents what they wanted, while community members joined the final review panel.
Teaching was only part of what brought him to Dhaka. The rest was Korail, where a proposed redevelopment touched the homes of an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 people. Sanders researched land rights and community land trusts there, aware that a misplaced word could change many lives. The specifics are a story for another day, but the lesson travels well: “Dhaka has its own set of rules, as we say. You have to pivot.”
Photo credit: Collected
Beyond the city, Sanders led students on road trips across the northwest, arriving at Rajshahi’s old monuments, its main road strung with antique lamps and its river so wide that India sat a mile away on the far bank. He slept in a bamboo hut during a heat wave and explored Puran Dhaka’s street food with colleagues. But what he loved most was simple: tea. Ginger brew at riverside stalls, and the little spot near campus where architecture students gathered after class. Gossip there, he notes, is practically public service: “You’ll get insights about everyone.”
Photo credit: Collected
His message to students is a lesson in humility. Trust is built with everyone and, once lost, is hard to regain; ego must make room for the people you serve. Above all: “Study hard, know what you are talking about, and when someone asks you about it, be confident in what you say. Even if you don’t know the answers to everything, be confident that you don’t know, and that you are willing to work with other people to find out.”
Theses may be written in libraries, but in his experience, “A lot of it really is just at a tea stall.”
