Dhaka Dispatch
It was my first Saturday in Dhaka. I was standing trapped on the half-rubbled median of a four lane road, within eyeshot of the National Museum, as a roaring parade marched past holding banners I could not understand and chanting slogans I could not follow. The next afternoon, I was in a glass-walled office surrounded by trees studying a large wooden model peppered with miniature buildings. Posters of enticing, photoshopped futures—a transformed riverfront, a new arts district, a former jail reimagined—hung on the walls and columns around, each captioned with a few lines of bold, Bengali text.
Dhaka is a city that traps a teeming frenzy in its air; breaths full of the hopes, dreams, worries, and pains of seventeen million people swirl together to form a hazy mist that blurs the edges of every view. Walking through it, you are always centred in a smoky vignette that frames too much to take in at one go. It teases to overwhelm, holding you in perpetual vigilance. Only on my flight out did I find the pause needed to grasp at the words for what I had felt. Those two experiences—on the streets and in the studio—kept replaying, paired together in my mind. They seemed to be expressions of the same hope, one that an architect I met there had declared unassumingly: “Our dream is to design our country”.
I had come to Bangladesh to visit the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements (BI), a place founded on that ambition. One half academy, the other a research studio, BI works to create a more holistic and considerate urban and architectural practice in the country. I arrived a few days before the opening of Bengal Stream: The Vibrant Architecture Scene of Bangladesh, an exhibition the Institute partnered on at the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel. It is the first ever show to present contemporary Bengali work to an international audience, and the excitement in the studio was palpable.
“It’s a feeling that Bangladeshi architecture has come of age now, that it’s arrived somewhere” BI’s Director-General, Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, told me. This arrival has been marked by increasingly frequent attention by the international spotlight: In 2016, two Bangladeshis—Marina Tabassum and Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury—were amongst the recipients of the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture; last year renowned photographer Iwan Baan toured the country on assignment; and this year his photographs will travel across Europe when Bengal Streammoves on from its current home in Basel.
Foreign curiosity is building, spurred by enthusiastic reports from those who have had the opportunity to visit. They describe a tradition so confident in its values that one of the exhibition’s curators, Nikalus Graber, went on to declare it “an architecture that believes in architecture”. To Ashraf, such responses are encouraging; he hopes the show will prompt conversation on how “other parts of the world can learn from Bangladesh”. This ambition is rooted in the mission of BI’s parent organisation, the Bengal Foundation, which was established to preserve and promote Bengali culture by Bangladeshi businessman Abdul Khair Litu.
In this way, BI is a cultural project, not just a technical one. Its dream comes from the national optimism of a newly independent Bangladesh; from Muzharul Islam, the father of modern architecture there. Islam believed there needed to be a plan for the country, the city, the neighbourhood, and even the street, before a single building could be designed well. To him, architecture was first and foremost an enunciation of culture, and his practice straddled a desire to maintain his Bengali roots and a global vision to modernise his nation,
He invited master architects like Louis Kahn and Paul Rudolph to practice in his country, to produce symbols of the modern ideals worth striving for. In turn, these designers responded to the specifics of their foreign context, marking a new era in twentieth century architecture. Kahn’s National Assembly Building is a temple to the emerging Bengali state, embodying a profound national reverence that is still tangible today. But the approach that bore it is a glaring product of its time: an exercise in imported empathy just twenty years after the British left.
Bangladesh’s contemporary architectural tradition still straddles that same divide, but thanks to several local leaders—Ashraf, Chowdhury, and Tabassum included—now negotiates it with cultural self-confidence. Today, the institute’s academy regularly hosts visiting experts to teach month-long programs to improve local capacity and competency. Then, Bengalis are charged with articulating their own architectural hopes.
The research arm in turn provides a local ideal to inspire them, displacing the foreign designers who still too often control the narratives about urban issues on the subcontinent. BI’s team of architects, geographers, and planners have reconceived Dhaka’s urban form, proposed new neighbourhoods in Silhet, studied small towns across the region, are building a comprehensive heritage database for the city in the country, and are writing new street design guidelines as well, all while engaging in a variety of other commissioned work. Their remit is so large, so all encompassing, that it beggars explanation for their drive.
Very often the word ‘nationalism’ is indicative of a virulent prejudice, but here it acts differently. The Bengal Institute’s work is rooted in a pride of nation, of culture, of language, and of place—the same pride that inspires violence in so many other instances—but BI offers a route to express it peacefully and productively. Perhaps, designing your country is the most patriotic thing you can do. Imagine nationalism as production of place.
Bangladesh’s modern history has been fuelled by a defensive embrace of its cultural heritage, punctuated every so often by Bengali men marching for Bengali leaders, just as I saw. The Institute’s work suggests a vision for a world where that pride manifests in planning. Where lived experiences trump statehood, and community forms around locality. Where the nation is the people you build your place with.
When I asked about the Institute’s ambition, the reply felt like an outrageous statement. “Our dream is to design our country”. Upon reflection, it has only become more so.
Location Dhaka, Bangladesh
Date January 2018