Health and well-being in garment workshops and factories

On 24th of April 2013 a garment factory - Rana Plaza - in Bangladesh collapsed. Over a thousand people died. It was by far the biggest disaster that happened in the garment industry. It caught media-attention from all over the world, but it was not the only accident. The lack of fire- and structural safety is a consistent problem (Huijerman, 2013), as well as the circumstances in which the employees work. This emerging situation was taken up for a Master project at the Department of the Built Environment form TU Eindhoven. The goal of the project was to come up with a building concept/ a blue print for a safe and healthy garment workshop or factory. Nine students participated. The students worked in multidisciplinary groups, designing that blue print of a safe and healthy Ghanaian workshop and a Bangladeshi factory.