Bengal Stream
Most architects would agree that their practice is more than just the act of ‘building’. What we build reflects who we are as a society; and for Niklaus Graber, a Swiss architect, that means his profession is “permanently searching for relevance” in Switzerland and around the world. In that pursuit, Graber first visited Bangladesh five years ago and found the country’s rich architectural heritage and vibrant contemporary practice more ‘relevant’ than anything he had seen elsewhere. “Here”, he says, “(architecture) is interacting with society”.
Graber kept returning: visiting buildings, meeting architects, teaching students, and producing drawings; and now, in collaboration with Andreas Ruby and Viviane Ehrensberger, he has co-curated a landmark exhibition to declare this moment a turning point for Bangladeshi architecture. On Friday, 1st December, Bengal Stream: The Vibrant Architecture Scene of Bangladesh opens at the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel, produced in collaboration with the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements, Dhaka.
The exhibition is the first of its kind: over thirty Bangladeshi architects have been invited to represent the country by showcasing their work—and through it, Bengali culture—across Europe. Over centuries, a tradition of excellent architecture has been nurtured on the shifting banks of Bengal’s deltas, by a canon of architects whose work have allowed certain ideas and motifs to recur and renovate their practice. Bangladesh produces architecture rooted in the specific qualities of its geographically and culturally varied places.
What runs through it all is an intensity and diversity that is near unparalleled for a country of its size. Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, Director-General of the Bengal Institute, argues that since the 18th Century ‘bangla’, the rural hut of Bengal, spawned the international typology of the bungalow; work from Bangladesh has gone on to transform thinking—and building—globally. His hope for the exhibition Bengal Stream is not limited to presenting contemporary Bangladeshi work to new international audiences, but extends to fostering dialogue on how “other parts of the world can learn from Bangladesh”. It is an ambition shared by the curators.
After WWII, architecture around the world was transformed. The approach of ‘Tropical Modernism’ pioneered by Bangladesh’s Muzharul Islam among others founded a practice that prioritised the environmental qualities of architecture—shading, light, temperature, ventilation. Islam built with Bengali roots; straddling a desire to preserve his culture and a global vision to modernise his nation with the work of master architects like Louis Kahn and Paul Rudolph. Those values continue to shape Bangladeshi architecture today.
While the forces of globalism have eroded the diversity of architectural traditions in so many other places, many of Islam’s former students, associates, and mentees—the protagonists of today’s architecture scene in Bangladesh and of the exhibition—now serve as inspiration on how to stand up for local culture. Bengal Stream is proud to unpack this legacy with the first international showcase of Islam’s original drawings serving to contextualise the work of the architects that now lead the practice.
Those designers—be it Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury, winner of the AR+D Emerging Architecture Award 2012; Marina Tabassum, winner of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016; or Rafiq Azam, winner of the World Architecture Community Award 2012 (11th Cycle), among numerous others—are already making waves on the international stage. Each of their projects offers a glimpse into the collective mindset that drives Bangladesh’s most exciting contemporary work.
That spirit is captured for the exhibition by world-renowned architecture photographer Iwan Baan, who travelled through the country during the monsoon to photograph the buildings in climatic context. Baan is famous for his photographs that show buildings in-use: capturing a sense of place and of people in addition to that of architecture. His work brings to life the exhibition’s thesis: that there is something special to learn from the nuanced practice of architecture in Bangladesh.
From a brick Mosque in a dense urban neighbourhood to an earthen resort on a riverbank, an apartment building with integrated greenery to a wetland restoration park for the city centre; over sixty diverse projects from established and emerging architects are assembled in this exhibition. Together, they reveal a brimming optimism in Bangladesh that celebrates the power of good design, well-considered building, and a meticulous embrace of cultural knowledge.
Bengal Stream presents a nation and practice remarkably confident in its values. It is, as Niklaus Graber muses, an “architecture that believes in architecture”. The Bangladeshi tradition has now come of age and this exhibition thrusts it to the world stage, inspiring other practices to embody such conviction.
Bengal Stream is open at the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel from December 2017 to May 2018. It will then travel through Germany and France before arriving in Dhaka in 2019.
Originally "Bengal Stream"—Shining a Spotlight on Bangladeshi Architecture for the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements.
Location Dhaka, Bangladesh
Date November 2017