A Glimpse of Bengal Institute Works

BENGAL INSTITUTE WORKS

The Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements is a unique, multi-disciplinary forum for the study and design of the environment. As a place for advancing the understanding of the lived environment, the Bengal Institute presents a platform for developing ideas to improve the qualities of architecture, landscapes, cities and settlements in Bangladesh. In generating a critical, creative and humanistic dialogue, the Institute applies an integrated approach to the study and rearrangement of the environment. Innovative transdisciplinary programs of the Institute integrate architectural and design research, investigation of cities and settlements, and the study of larger regions and landscapes.

ACADEMIC PROGRAM With the intention of creating an inter-disciplinary, postgraduate educational development in architecture, urban design, landscape design, and settlement studies in Bangladesh, Bengal Institute's Academic Program was launched in August, 2015. Structured around seminars, lecture series, and workshop styled design studios, the Academic Program offers monthly sessions in Spring and Fall Sequences that are open to anyone with an interest in the study and rearrangement of the environment. Faculty with national and international repute conducts the activities of the program.

RESEARCH AND DESIGN PROGRAM The Research and Design Program is dedicated to the study, design and planning of cities, settlements and landscapes. With the aim of facilitating the planned physical future of Bangladesh along with socio-economic development, the Program operates at various scales, from the regional to the small neighborhood.

The research and design focus of the program includes regional contexts, small towns, public space, public transport, high density livability, hydrological dynamics, landscape forms and settlement patterns. In collaboration with various government, non-government, local and international institutions, the program has been carrying out diverse operations.

PUBLICATION AND MEDIA With an objective to elevate visual insights and environmental awareness, and to reach out to a wider audience, Bengal Institute carries out robust publications and media based activities. The Institute publishes magazines, newsletters, leaflets, anthologies, books, periodicals in prints, with a growing repository of digital publications in e-books, videos, audios and alternative media. Major exhibitions have been mounted to bring the story of cities and environment to the public.

“Locations: Anthology of Architecture and Urbanism,” which is distributed world-wide, is the first international publication collaboration between Bangladesh and the USA.

AN ENLIGHTENED FUTURE FOR THE COUNTRY In the last year and half, Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements has earned its recognition for its innovative programs in research and design activities, academia, publication, and public events.

At the core of all its activities and programs is Bengal Institute's commitment to envisioning a future for our environment and habitats. The critical challenge of our time is, and will be, how we organize our larger environment, how we plan our cities and settlements, and how we prepare for the next fifty to hundredyears. At the heart of all this is how we recognize our rivers. I am constantly reminded of the words and observations of Prof. Abdur Razzaq, my uncle and mentor, “to visualize an exultant future for Bangladesh, one must not only consider the land and its people, but also its rivers.”

Bengal Institute has already produced significant large-scale design thinking, including ideas for civic and public spaces for Dhaka, initial research for a regional plan for Dhaka, prospects for a rail corridor between Khilkhet and Dhanmondi, and a townscape design for Sylhet, amongst others. Some of these ideas have been presented for public viewing. Our exhibition entitled “Next Dhaka,” installed at the Bengal Classical Music Festival 2016, highlighted ideas for Dhaka and was viewed by over 100,000 people.

Through these works, our intention is to share, with both policy-makers and the people, the potentials of good and thoughtful design. Our work emerges from a social responsibility, a deep commitment to contributing to an enlightened future for the country. To bring about real and effective changes to the future, I believe we should work towards creating an outline for a hundred year physical plan. At the Institute, we have taken the first steps towards reaching that goal. We are also collaborating with reputed design and planning institutes such as MIT, Harvard, Vastushilpa Foundation, BRAC University and others, in order to produce the finest collaborative output.

The academic program of the Institute is flourishing with participation by many professionals from architecture and other disciplines. Through these seminars; workshops; and international symposiums, conducted by nationally and internationally renowned architects and academicians; the academic program has established new norms in the discussion of architecture, landscape thinking and urban design.

Abul Khair (2016) Chairman, Executive Board, Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements

LAND, WATER AND SETTLEMENTS “Dhaka is the toughest city in the world.” “Bangladesh is symptomatic of the gravest environmental challenges.” It is in the neighborhood of such pronouncements that we find necessary to rethink the scope of environmental design, and its pedagogy and practices.

With its aquatic-geological formation – in flux – and projected consequences of environmental changes, the organization of land, water and settlements takes on an urgency that is unique to Bangladesh.

Settlements patterns, architectural types, and socio-economic life-world, that are dynamically inter-connected, confront new conditions raised by accelerated economic, environmental and social transformations.

In such anxious times, the architectural agenda needs to go beyond problem solving and form creation. At the Bengal Institute, we think that the architectural task should extend its sights to the intellectual, ethical and creative issues facing the futures of human habitats. In this regard, a new “architectural intelligence” is needed that is more about “place-form” rather than spectacular objects. The question of systemic and integrated “landscapes,” whether as habitats or place-forms, agricultural fabrics, or natural wetlands, should be at the core of this new approach. Developing this design intelligence requires a new kind of knowledge base, training and orientation that will uncover the original intimacy between architecture, habitation and landscape.

Bengal Institute promises unique learning programs by bringing outstanding thinkers and practitioners to a common stage in Dhaka. Programs will offer opportunities to both fresh and established professionals, and young faculty, in developing their interests and imaginations, as well as their obligations to the new environmental tasks.

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf [2015] Director General, Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements

The ďŹ rst brochure announcing the upcoming programs of Bengal Institute, 2015.

A panorama of activities at Bengal Institute, 2015-18.

Pages from the Bengal Institute newsletter/magazine, VAS.

Pages from the Bengal Institute newsletter/magazine, VAS.

Pages from the Bengal Institute newsletter/magazine, VAS.

Pages from the Bengal Institute newsletter/magazine, VAS.

Working at various scales, from the larger regional to the smaller public space, and from territorial arrangement to transport network, the Research and Design Team at Bengal imagines the prospects of a better Bangladesh. “Imagining a Future Bangladesh,� a special feature in The Daily Star 27th Anniversary Supplement, 2018.

“Imagining a Future Bangladesh,� a special feature in The Daily Star 27th Anniversary Supplement, 2018.

“Imagining a Future Bangladesh,� a special feature in The Daily Star 27th Anniversary Supplement, 2018.

What [the human] thrives on is what we need, how landscape and water structure urbanism, and our job is to re-edit this existing environment.

The variation between nature in the city landscape and urbanism have always been intertwined from a complementary couple to an antagonistic duo.

It essential to understand the transformation of territories as it is continually evolving because in our anthropocentric age, the speed and scale of change is only accelerating.

For me what's very interesting is always to look back at the kind of cartography of hydrology back in history to trace ancient waters in order to learn lessons for today.

- Kelly Shannon (2016)

A building must have dialogue with others, as well as yourself. It is like a living being...like an extension to your own life.

Architecture is one of the ingredients of life and I think that ingredient must become as living as life itself.

I realized that the culture is a holistic thing and if we are not brave enough to think about all types of communities or kinds of clients‌ that may not be the right thing.

There are many ways to really think about architecture - as social activism, as creating institutions and buildings, and as an exploration of space or light. But it is also possible to merge all these ideas together.

- Balkrishna Doshi (2016)

We live in resonance with our world, and architecture mediates and maintains that very resonance.

You are the co-author of every book you read because your mind imagines those literary images.

Contemporary architecture is often accused of emotional cornice, exclusive and restrictive aesthetics, and a distance from life. This criticism suggests that instead of tuning our buildings with realities of life and the human mind, we have adopted formalist attitudes. In all honesty, don't we usually design our buildings on the basis of functional, technical, and aesthetic criteria, instead of imagining them as resonant settings and backgrounds for situations of lived life?

- Juhani Pallasmaa (2016)

In your own lifetime, if you work extensively you may be able to do this: the whole country as a concentration of population in certain areas in a certain way, but even then within gardens.

Now, when we say architecture, it does not mean one building – the design of its parts, elements and details – but it means where the building is located, its harmony with the environment, and a descent design of the whole area, and implies, by extension, considering the whole city, the whole village, the whole region, the whole country.

I had this deep belief that every country should have its own architectural character. The architecture of a place depends on its geography, climate and the manifestation of its own culture.

- Muzharul Islam (1992)

The people who ďŹ rst started [the Bengal Renaissance] had their source in an incredible love for the country. The basis of the movement was: I am a Bengali, I have a language, I have things to tell my people, I want to build a decent society, everyone in the society has the capability and the right to what is available in it.

- Muzharul Islam (1992)

The only way to redeem Dhaka, or for that matter, any town in Bangladesh, is the making of more open spaces, civic spaces, and public places. Plazas, courts, maidans, chottors, prangans, gardens, parks, and chowks are the life-hub of a city.

Banners from the exhibition “Public Space� installed at the Bengal Classical Music Festival 2017, Dhaka.

Sadarghat Chottor is conceived of as a public outdoor space for the Sadarghat launch terminal and place of social assembly for the larger neighborhood.

Buriganga Riverbank as a public promenade shown at two different times of the water level of the river.

Gulshan Park conceived of as an “art park� with an elevated pavilion and forecourt adjacent to the footpath.

A vision for Buriganga riverbank showing a continuous public promenade along the bank with occasional pavilion-like structures. Change in the level of water will create different conditions on the riverbank.

Suggestion for converting Gulshan 2 Circle into a pedestrian plaza with automobiles going in a loop in the outer circle. The new Gulshan Circle Plaza can become the civic hub of Gulshan area. The MRT line proposed by the government is shown going across the circle.

Sidewalks are the mark of civility of a city, and Dhaka needs more of that. A sidewalk guideline is needed for Dhaka and other cities. It is critical that the pedestrian system of Dhaka is organized before the coming of the mass transit rail.

Proposed chottors and linked public spaces describe a plan for the small-town of Manikganj.

Small to big, and canal-fronting to faced by buildings, open spaces can be varied and multi-purpose in a city like Dhaka.

Areas on either side of Keane Bridge in Sylhet town, along with the bridge itself, is visualized as part of a planned pedestrian system that brings new civic life to the town.

BI graphics: Posters and announcements of various Bengal Institute programs.

There is architecture beyond buildings, and it includes books, booklets, and pamphlets. Locations: Anthology of Architecture and Urbanism, published by ORO Editions and Bengal Publications, is the ďŹ rst publishing venture between a US and Bangladeshi publisher.

B BI Books, an imprint of Bengal Publications, is a publishing entity of Bengal Institute. Projected publications include townscape plans for various cities and towns, monographs on architects, and critical studies in architecture, urbanism, urban sociology and history.

DHAKA ANTIDHAKA

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed

Anisuzzaman

Balkrishna Doshi

Shamsul Wares

Stanely Tigerman

Michael Sorkin

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf

Chairperson

Abul Khair

A.K. Abdul Momen

Chairperson

Chief Advisor

Marina Tabassum

Nahas Ahmed Khalil

RaďŹ q Azam

Salauddin Ahmed

Jalal Ahmad

Iqbal Habib

Michael Sorkin

Dilip da Cunha

Shamsul Wares

Bashirul Huq

Anuradha Mathur

Kerry Hill

Arindam Chakrabarti

Balkrishna Doshi

Todd Williams

Kenneth Frampton

Rounaq Jahan

Suha Ozkan

ADVISORY BOARD

Luva Nahid Choudhury

Saif Ul Haque

Ehsan Khan

Kashef Chowdhury

ASM Shahidullah Khan

Belal E Baaquie

EXECUTIVE BOARD

MASTER FACULTY

Rahul Mehrotra

Peter Stutchbury

Peter Buchanan

Kongjian Yu

Kenneth Frampton

Gary Hack

David Leatherbarrow

Juhani Pallasmaa

Billie Tsien

Anuradha Mathur

Lyndon Neri

Rosanna Hu

Lindsay Bremner

Salauddin Ahmed

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf

Christoph Steiger

Bashirul Huq

Carey Clouse

Peter James Goad

Tapati Guha-Thakurta

Dilip da Cunha

Syed Manzoorul Islam

Khondaker Hasibul Kabir

Nahas Ahmed Khalil

Adnan Morshed

Wakilur Rahman

Marina Tabassum

Peter Buchanan

Sonia Amin

Jalal Ahmad

Gary Hack

Prem Chandavarkar

Abed Chaudhury

Suha Ozkan

James Timberlake

Soumitro Ghosh

Niklaus Graber

Vo Trong Nghia

Saif Ul Haque

Naveeda Khan

Andra Matin

Ehsan Khan

TEACHING FACULTY AND SPEAKERS

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf

Luva Nahid Choudhury

Saif Ul Haque

Director-General

Director Administration

Director Research and Design

Nusrat Sumaiya Tani

Farhat Afzal

Md. Jishan Ahmed

Muntakim Haque

Mahbub-Ul-Hasan

Farah Jalil

Rubaiya Nasrin

Fatiha Polin

Md. Mahmudur Rahman

Afifa Razzaque

Afreen Ahmed Rochana

Sumaita Tahseen

Associate Research Coordinator

“Architecture is the choreography of life.”

World renowned architects, acclaimed academics, devoted professionals, writers and researchers, and a team of dedicated individuals are the people of Bengal Institute.

Marina Tabassum

Masudul Islam Shammo

Director Academic

Coordinator Research and Design Coordinator Academic

Tazrin Ahmed

Dhrubo Alam

Naziur R. Chowdhury

Maleeha Mazen Khan

Maria Kipti

Rifat Ara Mostofa

Hasan M. Rakib

Sultan Mahmud

Arfar Razi

Zarin Tasnim

Mohammad Tauheed

BI TEAM

Bengal Center Civil Aviation Plot-2, Khilkhet Dhaka, Bangladesh 1229 Tel: 88 09666-773311 http://bengal.institute/ https://www.facebook.com/BengalInstitute/ Contact: info@bengal.institute