Bengal Stream

Bengal Stream

The Vibrant Architecture Scene of Bangladesh

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The Vibrant Architecture Scene of Bangladesh

Andreas Ruby The fact that the Swiss Architecture Museum is producing the first major exhibition on contempo­ rary architecture from Bangladesh ever shown out­ side the country begs a question or two. Such as: Why Bangladesh, of all places? And what makes ar­ chitecture from Bangladesh particularly relevant to be shown in Switzerland, or in the Western world in general?

A lot, actually. Bangladesh is not as far away as it seems. You may even wear a piece of clothing produced in Bangladesh as you read this, since Ban­ gladesh is the world’s second largest exporter of Western clothing brands. But for a long time the only moments we heard about architecture in Ban­ gladesh was when one of its textile factories tragic­ ally collapsed due to structural incapacities or fire incidents. It seems a cynical association, but it illus­ trates only too well how much our western view of Bangladesh is conditioned by references such as poverty, precarious labour or natural catastrophes.

These phenomena are still real, but they also brand the global perception of the country in a stereotyp­ ical way and effectively obfuscate positive develop­ ments that are under way as well.

And architecture is one of them. Largely unbeknownst to the world, Bangladesh has devel­ oped a highly prolific contemporary architecture scene in the course of few decades only. A stunning body of work has emerged, which can easily stand the comparison to the architectural production in the West both in terms of its quality, versatility and originality. The fact that we hardly know any­ thing about it (myself included, until a year and a half ago) says something about the post-colonial blindfolds of architectural discourse in the West.

Build­ings from Bangladesh very rarely get pub­ lished in Western architectural magazines or books, and even online it is difficult to find more than piece-meal information.

The only exception to this rule is a build­ ing by a Western architect: Louis Kahn’s Assembly Building in Dhaka. The building is clearly one of the great mythical masterpieces of 20 th century mod­ ernism, world-famous and yet visited by only a few.

But maybe at least as interesting as the build­ing it­ self is the cultural dialectics out of which it emerged and how it eventually empowered the unfolding of contemporary Bangladeshi architecture. It is the fruit of a most unlikely cultural dialogue that was initiated by Muzharul Islam, who is considered to be the first modern architect in the region. Islam

had studied architecture at Yale in the US in the ’50s and ’60s with Paul Rudolph among his professors.

Coming back to East Pakistan (which was to become Bangladesh only in 1971), he re-read the traditional Bengal building culture through the lens of West­ ern modernism and construed a unique blend of both Eastern and Western approaches to space.

When Dacca needed a new Assembly Building in 1962, he would have been ideally placed to design it. Committed to enhancing the process of cultur­ al cross-proliferation, he however proposed to ap­ proach an international architect of renown to do the job. Kahn was elated to be chosen and immedi­ ately embraced the history of architecture of the Bengal region. Sensibly guided by the intellectual company of Islam, Kahn unearthed many inspira­ tions that have left clear traces in his design. He seized the Assembly Building as an opportunity to absorb the building culture of Bengal, appropriat­ ing local material and construction techniques to ground his own idiosyncratical architectural ap­ proach within the place he was invited to design.

In that sense the Assembly Building became the blueprint for a ‘horizontal ’ type of cultural globali­ sation which considers all contexts as equally rel­ evant, both worthy and able to inspire each other.

It marks a clear departure from the ‘vertical’, topdown colonial application of a Western model in a developing context. When the building was fin­ ished in 1982/83 – after two decades of development, construction, and politically motivated delays – the emerging architects of Bangladesh promptly picked up on this model of horizontal cultural ex­ change and grasped it as an opportunity to articu­ late their local architectural approach in relation to Western modernism. But instead of simply copy­ ing Kahn’s approach, they applied his technique of cultural absorption in reverse direction. Embrac­ ing some of his construction methods and spatial concepts in their own designs ultimately enabled them to modernise the rich architectural history of their own country, rather than uncritically replac­ ing their local tradition with mechanically applied formulas imported from the ‘New World’.

This fascinating cultural dialectic has argu­ ably empowered Bangladesh’s contemporary archi­ tectural scene to unfold a highly distinctive archi­ tectural language of its own, which sensibly reso­ nates with the agendas of global architecture. It is a very robust, simple, direct and sensual archi­tec­ ture, that makes do with often very limited mate­-

14 ri­al conditions, yet accomplishes exceptional re­ sults. It is able for instance to accommodate the ex­ treme climatic conditions with very modest tech­ nological equipment by using simple fans and ver­ nacular natural ventilation methods instead of ex­ tensive air-conditioning. It is quite the contrary to our Western culture of construction where build­ ings deal with much more moderate climatic con­ ditions through much more elaborate technologic­ al systems. Additionally, architects in Bangladesh have only a few materials to build with. Since there are no resources of natural stone in the country, the available material palette mostly consists of brick, concrete, bamboo and mud – materials which can be locally sourced and manually applied by local work­ force. Because of this restrained access to technol­ ogy, architecture in Bangladesh has always placed more emphasis on sophisticated layouts of space and the smart use of natural resources such as light, air, plants, and water. In that sense the con­ditions of building have changed less over time compared to the West, where rapidly changing tech­nological paradigms have often generated corresponding ‘-isms’, such as Californian case study architecture of the 1950s that thrived on light airplane produc­ tion facilities, or the architec­ture of prefabricat­ ed plastic modules from the 1960s made possi­ ble thanks to the easy availabili­ty of oil, or British high-tech architecture from the 1980s. While it is easy to date Western buildings from these periods based on their material and constructive specifici­ ty, buildings built in East Pakistan and later Bangla­ desh in the same period have a lot in common with each other conceptu­ally and aesthetically because they generally use the same construction process­ es and materials. Thus, buildings from young ar­ chitects often do not ostensibly differ from build­ ings of older architects (and vice versa), which cre­ ates a notable absence of the fashion-based cycles of architectural expression which have become an increasingly recognisable phenomenon of Western architecture during the past decades.

Interestingly enough, many of these quali­ ties of Bangladesh’s contemporary architecture are increasingly sought after by young architects in the Western hemisphere, too – particularly in Swit­ zerland – which in part answers the question why it makes good sense to introduce this architecture to a Western audience. There is a growing interest in a language of form, whose historical half-time exceeds the pretence of its newness, and a certain generosity of authorship free of the need to always outsmart one’s predecessors with a yet more rad­ ical solution. As issues of sustainability today be­ come increasingly important, architects are more inclined to build with locally available construc­ tion materials, not without rediscovering vernac­ ular building techniques that had been half-forgot­ ten along the way in the name of progress, such as rammed-earth or traditional timber constructions.

Wary of current technological solutions that pre­ tend to make buildings more sustainable yet often do not, such as exterior thermal insulation or con­ trolled ventilation, more and more architects are eager to employ common-sense techniques that had been in use for centuries prior to the industri­ al revolution.

One of them is Swiss architect Niklaus Graber, co-founder of Graber & Steiger Architects based in Lucerne, who is the curator of this exhi­ bition. Initially, it was Kahn’s legendary Assembly Building that drew him, like so many architects, to Bangladesh. When he saw the building for the first time, he shortly pondered the option to stop work­ ing as an architect. ‘Everything you could possibly do in architecture seemed already done by him, so it felt as if there was nothing left to do for the rest

of us,’he told me when we first met. Luckily for him and us he then got introduced to a whole group of local architects and their buildings in and around Dhaka, which made him more hopeful again that there may be a life after Kahn after all. Their build­ ings demonstrate how one could digest Kahn’s leg­ acy and construct a contemporary architectural thesis on its grounds.

After this initial visit he went back to Bang­ ladesh many times and developed a thorough un­ derstanding of the local architectural scene. He brought his architecture students from Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts to Dhaka and was later invited to be a visiting lecturer at The Bengal Institute of Architecture, Landscape and Settlements in Dhaka. Through years of contin­uous curiosity and relentless research he has built up a unique knowledge base on contemporary ar­ chitecture from Bangladesh. He strongly feels that his architecture friends in Bangladesh, building under often most precarious conditions, somehow managed to dig deeper into the flesh of architec­ ture than architects in the West operating in much more advantageous circumstances. We agreed that this paradox begs to be addressed critically, and af­ ter he had shown me some photographs of crucial examples of recent architecture from Bangladesh, the idea of an exhibition at S AM was born. This was in March 2016. If only one-and-a-half years later the Swiss Architecture Museum can inaugurate this exhibition and present the catalogue, then this is first and foremost thanks to Niklaus Graber’s un­ wavering passion and energy to explore and dis­ seminate this remarkable heritage of contempo­ rary architecture, exposing the fact that Bangla­ desh is not a white spot on the world architectural map, but in fact a highly cultivated and rich ter­ ritory from which we can learn a lot. We are also grateful to the Bengal Institute of Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements for their valuable col­ laboration, which has been instrumental in the production process of the project by adding their resources, know-how and network. We feel this ex­ hibition comes at a crucial moment, since architec­ ture from Bangladesh is getting more and more the international acknowledgement it deserves. In 2016, two of the six prestigious Aga Khan Awards for Architecture were given to two architects from Bangladesh. With this exhibition and the accompa­ nying catalogue – the first comprehensive survey of Bangladesh’s architecture in the Western world – the Swiss Architecture Museum intends to fur­ ther the awareness of this outstanding work, and we would not be surprised to see buildings from some of the architects featured here to pop up also outside of Bangladesh in the near future.

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Bengal Stream

Niklaus Graber 1 2

Bangladesh on the world map River map of Bangladesh

‘You have to be a world man and a Bengal. It’s im­ possible otherwise… When I mention standing on one’s own soil… it is to find oneself, but not to find oneself and become stagnant. What I am seeking is to stand on one’s own feet and then to proceed forward. If for that reason I have to take two steps backward to go one step forward, I have no prob­ lem with that. I think that there is no other way of moving forward.’ (Muzharul Islam, 1923 – 2012)1

Bangladesh, Bangladesh Only a few of us are likely to be familiar with cur­ rent architectural developments in Bangladesh’s tropical delta region. This area, blessed with cul­ tural and scenic riches, has so far barely been pres­ ent on the architectural world map, but that may change in the near future, due to excellent works emerging from a vibrant architecture movement.

The output of this ‘Bengal Stream’ is not just highly controversial in a spatial and architectural sense, it also bears witness to the high societal relevance of architecture as a discipline. By local action, careful­ ly developed from the country ’s history and geog­ raphy, current trends in Bangladesh also convey global meaning and therefore might make us think in depth about our own actions.

Many of us in the west only know Bangla­ desh because of the buildings designed there by L.I. Kahn or from fleeting daily news items. This of­ten one-sided reporting on catastrophic floods, en­ vironmental sins, or misery in the textile industry can easily give rise to the impression that any de­ velopment in this so-called emerging nation is im­ paired by natural disasters, political instability and mismanagement. Many of our contemporaries still associate Bangladesh with memories of images like those that were sent around the world in 1971 from the huge media event Concert for Bangladesh, show­ ing a country in need of aid, battered by flooding, hunger and a war of independence. Over four dec­ ades later, Georg Harrison’s anthemic lyrics ‘Bang­ la Desh, Bangla Desh’, which triggered a wave of sol­ idarity worldwide, seem to be still ringing in many western ears and to have cemented the clichéd no­ tion of a troubled region on India’s doorstep.

Naturally though, time has not stood still, also in the Ganges Delta. The societal and economic successes of recent decades are impossible to over­ look. Bangladesh’s rapid development, making it a

18 player embedded in a global network, keeps going beyond the extent imagined in the west. With ide­ alism, engagement and optimism, large parts of the population are confronting deficiencies. Even though many political, social and economic efforts focus on reaching so-called western standards, con­ sideration of local cultural values and reinforce­ ment of local identity are not casually allowed to fade into the background in Bangladesh.

Despite these positive developments, it must not be forgotten that there are still many chal­ lenges in Bangladesh. Even though sanitary, medic­ al and education-policy-related shortcomings, for example, have dramatically decreased over the past decades, this young nation faces new obstacles on a daily basis, caused by global contexts in particular.

This country, which is highly susceptible to flood­ ing, is being hit hard by the rise in sea level and the increase in meltwater from the Himalayas, both re­ sulting from climate change. However, population growth and the rising trend of rural depopulation are also presenting politicians and planners with new kinds of problems. Neoliberalism and the new world order are not making it any easier for this country to get out of the corner it finds itself in as a cheap production site, strategically well positioned at the interface between the Indian, Chinese and Southeast-Asian turbo-economies.

At the moment, there are also a number of pending controversial issues on rural, urban and architectural levels. Since the 1990s, like in other populous regions of the world, the urban conur­ bations of Dhaka and Chittagong, where pressure to develop is enormous, have seen excessive profitoriented construction, along with ill-advised im­ ports of faceless all-purpose architectures. In this sensitive delta landscape with a fragile water/land balance, the menacing urban sprawl and the rapid increase in soil sealing caused by cities’ growth get­ ting out of hand pose a latent risk of taking away the rural population’s livelihood. It is therefore no surprise that such drastic consequences of hasty globalisation are also causing lamentable social disorientation and loss of cultural identity.

However, an ever-enlarging group of re­ sponsible-minded architects and cultural workers are becoming a clear force, acting in the interests of cultural identity and a contemporary approach to pending problems. One impressive aspect of the very active architectural debate is that the archi­ tectural argument and professional ethics are con­ stantly kept in mind. Inventive spatial approaches and innovative detailed solutions demonstrate that architecture as a discipline is able to provide rele­ vant responses to urgent societal, economic and eco­ logical issues, without succumbing to the tempta­ tion of short-lived trends or the lure of quick money.

Srimangal tea gardens, the Chittagong hills and the river-char regions in the north are all unique areas that could not be any more different.

Water, in the form of hundreds of rivers, the sea and the fertility-bringing rain of the monsoon, is an omnipresent element that has not only influ­ enced land cultivation, construction, and transport routes, but has also become a deeply integral part of the soul and culture of Bangladeshis. The bounda­ ries between land and water are indistinct and con­ stantly change throughout the seasons. Land that is possible to cultivate in the dry winter months can be a kilometre-wide river during the monsoon months, when sometimes up to half of the land area is underwater. On this clayey soil everything seems to be quite literally in a state of flux. When Bang­ ladeshi architects talk about their homeland, it is not uncommon for them to point out that change, not only in a hydrological sense, is sometimes the greatest observable constant.

Water is a blessing and a menace at the same time. Essential as the most important basis of life, water in the form of floods and storms rep­ resents an ever-recurring danger. Out of these di­ verging hydrological circumstances and under the influence of the tropical climate, an actual delta architecture has developed, which leaves room for water, but also offers protection against it. While traditional settlement and building typologies nat­ urally respected and incorporated the geohydro­ logical conditions, interventions made primarily in urban agglomerations in the context of the nas­ cent construction boom and changing construction processes have often been insensitive and thrown the delicate balance of water currents out of kil­ ter. Particularly in recent years though, building ty­ pologies strongly respecting the fluid context and demonstrating that the rising standards in com­ fort or security do not have to conflict with the delta’s natural conditions have emerged once again.

In new delta-specific building types, ranging from schools with an amphibious function through to cyclone-resistant homes and shelters, many design­ ers are poetically interweaving tradition and inven­ tiveness in a highly functional way.

Increasingly, designs are drawing on the traditional rural settlement structure, with its clus­ ter-like arrangements of courtyards, which has al­ ways been an effective response to the climatic and also social circumstances of life in the delta. As one architecture lecturer emphatically explained to her students in Dhaka not long ago, eliminating the courtyard from settlement patterns is like robbing Bengal of its soul. In particular, designs from the late 1970s, the ’80s and the ’90s exhibit a strong affin­ ity for the rural homestead, as is clearly conveyed in works by Raziul Ahsan and Diagram Architects, for instance. However, there are also current experi­ ments on how the densification that is sought today Anything flows can be produced on the basis of the cluster typolo­ gy. While each building in a traditional homestead Bangladesh’s territory, at around 150,000 km², is less had a singular function, designs like the Rashid Eye than half the size of Germany, but its population Hospital by Nahas Khalil show multistory function­ of over 160 million is twice as high. Situated in the al overlaps and building additions. largest delta region on Earth, embedded between the geographical extremes of the Himalayan Mas­ sif and the Bay of Bengal, this country has the gi­ Land without stone gantic rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra ploughing through it. Although the delta is characterised by As a direct consequence of the geographical and cli­ little variation in altitude and Bangladesh is large­ matic conditions, as well as the geological peculiar­ ly defined by the endlessly vibrant green of fields, ity that stone does not naturally occur on the sur­ farmland or forests and the silvery shimmer of wa­ face of the delta’s wetland, construction in the re­ ter, there are major differences in the landscapes of gion has historically developed on the basis of the the individual regions, which have also led to local­ main raw materials bamboo, wood and clay, which ly specific building forms. The habitat of the Ben­ are still the basic substances for building produc­ gal tiger in the southern mangrove forests of the tion in Bangladesh to this day, alongside the con­ Sundarbans, the sandy beaches of Cox’s Bazar, the crete that is omnipresent in urban conurbations.

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Riverscape near Barishal Satellite image of the Southern Delta Traditional bamboo frame Illustration of a traditional homestead Rural homestead with mud houses

19 The chala hut, a building form based on bamboo and air-dried clay, has evolved practically all through­ out the delta. The English colonial rulers took this ‘Bengal hut’ as a reference point and eventually ex­ ported it into worldwide terminology as the ‘bun­ galow’. The pavilion is a structure type described by architect and urbanist Kazi Khaleed Ashraf as a ‘machine’ made to provide protection and comfort in a tropical climate, and as a primordial Bengal hut of sorts.2 Crowned by a projecting roof, a sup­ port structure sits on a low plinth, providing pro­ tection from the sun and the monsoon, while allow­ ing the welcome refreshing breeze to pass through.

Moreover, the porosity of the bungalow model, a result of the climatic conditions, leads to a spatial openness that very closely links the building with its environment.

Structural references to the bungalow mod­el are present in many contemporary structures, re­ sulting in buildings based on a low-tech approach and spatially interconnected with the context. The loom shed designed by the young architects at Ar­ cheground for Amber Denim in Gazipur shows that even large industrial companies have now recog­ nised the possibility of using a clever architectural approach as a way to improve working conditions in textile manufacturing via simple means. It is also interesting that the pavilion model is not only being developed further as a free-standing single-storey lightweight structure, but is even playing an increas­ ingly significant role in stacked form, in the search for high-rise concepts fit for the tropics.

Alongside this architectural tradition of the bungalow formed from unrefined materials, a unique brick and terracotta tradition has also evolved in the delta throughout the centuries un­ der the influence of a range of very different cul­ tures, and was, for a long time, mainly reserved for the construction of monuments. The ruins of Bud­ dhist monasteries in Mahasthangarh, the mosques in Bagerhat or the Hindu temple in Kantanagar are impressive evidence of this development. The fact that everything in a delta region is in flux is precise­ ly why solid architecture often turns out to be the only constant and protective element, calmly and sedately abiding. In this respect, sturdy and clear geometries, along with archetypal structures, also seem to be suitable as source material for designs today. In the local tradition, the protective crust is made from brick or clay wherever these mate­ rials are available – and of course in recent dec­ ades, many architects have exhibited a highly vis­ ible strong affinity for in-situ concrete, perhaps be­ cause of its sediment-like qualities.

The high tropical temperatures all year round and the gleaming sunlight have always had a significant influence on the approaches to design and may be one reason why contemporary posi­ tions convey immense virtuosity when it comes to light guidance and spatial development. Spatial strategies, such as onion-skin-like layering or the creation of courtyards and shafts that provide nat­ ural illumination, not only make sense in terms of the climate, but also evoke a spatial richness that softens the frequently chosen strict underlying ty­ pologies with subtle variations.

Porosity The broken forms of the Friendship Centre by Kashef Chowdhury, for example, increase the cool­ ing effect of the structural layout and allow effec­ tive transverse ventilation through the dense fab­ ric of the brick pavilion. This pragmatic underlying approach produces a fascinating spatial framework that provides lines of sight, makes cross-references

8 Remains of Vasu Monastery, Bogra, 8th century 9 Kantanagar Temple, Dinajpur, 18th century 10 Friendship Centre, Gaibandha, 2011 11 Friendship Centre, void/solid scheme 12 Craft in a brick kiln

13 Shait Gumbad Mosque, Bagerhat, 15th century 14 Jahangirnagar University, Savar, 1971 15 Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka, 2012 16 Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka, section 17 Gulshan Society Mosque, Dhaka, 2016

20 and guides light, all in surprising ways, despite its compactness.

The impressive spatial effect of indirect light guidance can also be experienced in North Dhaka’s Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, designed by Marina Tabas­ sum. The multilayered structure of the building en­ velope with light shafts open to the sky and openpored masonry obstruct direct sunlight while en­ suring permanent ventilation of the interior spac­ es. It almost seems as though the building quietly breathes, so as to prevent visitors from overheat­ ing. In addition, the impression of mystical lightplay instantly makes one aware of how serious the architect is when she says: ‘Daylight is for free.

Why should we not work with it?’3 It is not uncommon for climatically, tecton­ ically and creatively effective material experiments to be conducted with mineral construction materi­ als, sometimes leading to discreet ornamentation with a semi-transparent effect. Interestingly, this gives heavy materials, such as brick or concrete, a lightness like that of organic construction materi­ als, such as bamboo, wood or jute fabric. Converse­ ly though, light materials are also condensed, given them a solidness that brings about a kind of ‘hard­ ening’. Tightly bound stave bundles or multilayered beams made of bamboo result in a physical pres­ ence and strength normally absent in lightweight structures.

Although many younger-generation struc­ tures are geared towards homogeneous use of bam­ boo, brick or clay, there are numerous designs that can be viewed as a kind of hybrid of these diverg­ ing references to the history of construction and are anchored in both the vernacular and the monu­ mental. In the structural design of masonry shells, walled-up with varying densities using handmade brick and bound to the tradition of the subcon­ tinent’s omnipresent ornamental lattices or jalis, many designers have performed a balancing act between the textile-like porosity of the bungalow model and the earth-related crustiness of the tem­ ple building. Depending on the perspective, this use of material can be seen as ‘earthy textility ’ or ‘tex­ tile earthwork ’. This gives rise to a changeable per­ ception of the building, oscillating between ephem­ eral lightness and static monumentality, while re­ flecting the organic, the mineral, the rural and the urban in equal measure. This phenomenon was al­ ready impressively demonstrated by Muzharul Is­ lam’s design for Jahangirnagar University in which masonry corners almost appear to fray like textiles, adding something soft and fragile to the monumen­ tality of the large-scale scheme.

Not just homogeneous constructions, but also combinations of different construction mate­ rials open up welcome possibilities for designers to take a playful approach, even with limited resourc­ es, so as to give their structures the desired state be­ tween lightness and heaviness. Already in the 1950s, for the College of Arts and Crafts in Dhaka, Muzha­ rul Islam used an interwoven mixture of the mate­ rials concrete, brick and wood to produce a collage that touches the visitors on different levels. Exper­ imenting with ways of making a load-bearing exte­ rior wall permeable to light and air without under­ mining its homogeneous overall appearance, Tim­ my Aziz had ceramic tubes built into a brick wall as ‘ventilation tiles’ in a Dhanmondi townhouse de­ signed for his mother in the 1990s. He thus suc­ ceeded in creating interior spaces with the visual screen necessary in an urban context, while simul­ taneously maintaining the desired communication with the surroundings via sounds and breezes. It is not uncommon for a visible concrete support struc­ ture to be combined with masonry infill, which can sometimes be seen as an architectural allusion to

the tradition of weaving. For the Osban House in Chittagong, Nahas Khalil developed an innovative composite construction method that makes the building earthquake-resistant without robbing its edges of the desired softness.

The strategy of ‘softening ’, which optically leads to a shifting of materials’immanent aggregate states, makes it possible to put even decimetre-thick in-situ concrete into a textile in-between state. As demonstrated intriguingly by the multi-storey Gul­ shan Society Mosque, this can give even monumen­ tal underlying patterns a scale that subtly incorpo­ rates the human factor. The white concrete shafts, which at first glance appear to have been composed randomly, can be deciphered as calligraphy by the trained eye, making the building a communica­ tive player in the urban space, despite its radicality.

When concrete is used in a rather planar form for a protective structure near the coast, this usually brit­ tle construction material develops a lightness with the inherent elegance of a carefully draped sari. The fact that such a thing is possible is further evidence of how productive an unorthodox hybridisation of different intellectual approaches to material can be.

Thus, in many contemporary works, the various strands of the history of construction are rebalanced and seem to gently flow into each o ­ ther, quite in keeping with the delta’s typical blurring of the boundary between water and land. In urban conurbations that have experienced massive den­ sification due to the huge influx of the rural pop­ ulation, but also in rural areas where urban focal points are also gradually being implemented, this openly interpretable legibility of buildings leads to particularly good anchoring in the respective context and to a high degree of acceptance. It is not to be forgotten that in the production of build­ ings nationwide, manual skilled trades have a high status. Due to the low wages and seemingly end­ less human resources, even complex urban build­ ings are built manually most of the time. Naturally, the hard work on the construction sites should not be trivialised or romanticised, but the widespread use of the human hand is precisely what prevents buildings from coming across as clean and soulless, and ensures that some time-honoured techniques are still prevalent.

Delta architecture Although it is not uncommon for many architec­ tures to be based on simple and concise typologies, a design never ends abruptly at the building ’s edge.

Notably, numerous relatively recent examples in­ cluding high-rises exhibit a subtle balance between building and surroundings, and a fluid interweav­ ing of interior and exterior. This sensitivity is some­ times due to the fact that in Bangladesh, architec­ ture actually already begins with the reclamation and appropriation of the landscape, which in the water-veined delta, traditionally occurs by means of the construction of dams, plinths and land fills.

Accumulation and erosion or the establishment of passage-forming jetties, step-shaped ghats or bridges are phenomena that divide and structure the landscape and settlement areas, and also have a firm foothold in many architects’ design practice.

One reason why buildings in the delta, even if they are built as solid constructions, rarely appear her­ metic or self-contained, is perhaps that recurring, often climate-related elements, such as roof over­ hangs, cornices, thresholds, plinths or verandas and, in particular, ‘monsoon windows’ framed by protruding ledges and soffits, evoke a sense of open­ ness and approachability. In many respects, del­ ta architecture is geared towards manifold uses,

18 Amphibious structure of Arcadia School, architect Saif Ul Haque 19 Cyclone shelter in the costal belt at Kuakata, architect Kashef Chowdhury 20 Scaffolding for turning a traditional boat 21 Sadarghat Terminal, Dhaka 22 Passenger deck of an overnight boat

21 because it has to be as useful as possible in both dry and wet periods, as demonstrated by the veranda as an omnipresent threshold space. Here, the deep walk-through façade is not a loss of space, but in­ stead, as it can be used in multiple ways, it proves to be a space-saving spatial concept that makes sense even in highly dense areas. In addition, there is also a social aspect to the veranda. Whoever enters this space indicates readiness for communication. For architect Rafiq Azam, who installed scaffold-like green balconies in front of a residential tower by Dhaka’s Dhanmondi Lake, stepping out into this in­ termediate space is even to be compared with walk­ ing out into the open countryside, where the Ben­ gali finds calm and contemplation.

Alongside delta architecture’s recurring ty­pologies that, like the veranda model or the court­ yard model, find their manifestation in almost all construction projects, the sometimes extreme cli­ matic conditions have also led to special architec­ tural forms that notably stimulate architects’ re­ sourcefulness and innovation. Recently, in response to the huge seasonal fluctuations in water levels, the Arcadia School, designed by Saif Ul Haque, was built in Keraniganj near Savar. Thanks to amphibi­ ous floats made from recycled oil drums, this school can be used regardless of whether water levels are high or low and it innovatively interweaves tradi­ tion with inventiveness. Such an approach, which may have been inspired by both the pavilion and boat building, dissolves the dichotomy between land and water, and suddenly makes it possible to develop a site for an educational institution with­ out impairing the water flow, even in an area pre­ viously unsuitable for construction.

One building type that is static in compar­ ison but also functions as an educational institu­ tion or as a community centre in normal weath­ er conditions is the cyclone shelter, which is wide­ spread in the Bay of Bengal’s storm-plagued coastal regions. Conceived as solid ‘rocks’ of stability, these buildings give the population a temporary refuge on storm days. Bashirul Haq, one of the country’s architectural pioneers, confronts the storm with a brutalist cube on pilotis, which is only connected to the wetland via a ramp system, much like an ark.

Kashef Chowdhury, on the other hand, who has in­ tensively addressed the storm-plagued coastal re­ gions in recent years, also in his photographic work, seems to want to defeat the cyclone with its own weapons. Inspired by eddy formations, he proposes wrapping a cross-shaped conglomeration of school and common rooms in a spiral-shaped ramp layer that provides access to the walk-on roofscape and offers little resistance to the impacting wind. The ramp’s gentle slope even enables those seeking shel­ ter to get their livestock out of harm’s way, which represent an essential means of subsistence after the storm passes. However, this intriguing combi­ nation of cross-shaped floor plan and spiral-shaped layout can accomplish even more: apart from its recognisable iconographic appeal, radiating out into the endless expanse of the wetland, the volu­ minous nature of the concrete structure facilitates natural ventilation and pleasant indirect illumina­ tion of the interior spaces. In this infrastructure project, pragmatism and poetry come together in a surprising way, showing that architects in Bang­ ladesh always keep architectural qualities in mind, also when it comes to functional buildings.

construction of static entities because, in a coun­ try where up to half the land is underwater in the monsoon season, ships are also an integral part of the settlement culture. The people of Bangladesh have a profound relationship with water and in the endlessly branching waterways, boats have always played a central role in the settlement and recla­ mation of the landscape. Be it on the banks of the Buriganga or Shitalakha in the middle of the bus­ tling city of Dhaka, in the most remote canals of Sundarbans or in the dockside areas of Chittagong, ships are omnipresent throughout the country in a wide variety of different forms and play an essen­ tial role in the everyday lives of many Bangladesh­ is. At Dhaka’s Sadarghat Launch Terminal, when whole swarms of large ferries launch each evening under the deafening sound of sirens, it becomes ap­ parent that these floating steel hulks are veritable public spaces, shared temporarily by thousands of travellers. Also the improvised rafts, made from old tarpaulins and collected polystyrene rubbish, which go back and forth between low-threshold Karail Basti and pricy Gulshan, are like little public platforms taking densely packed groups of stand­ ing people across Banani Lake. On Sangu River near the Myanmar border, bamboo rafts that are dozens of metres long become the rafters’ floating territo­ ry, on which they pitch their tents, not just on the short term, but even for days at a time.

Ships, ferries and rafts not only serve as a means of transport, but also take on key routine and supply functions, as floating markets, schools or hospitals. Thus, it is not particularly surprising when planners once again start focusing more on the ship, as a cultural asset and as an alternative to the sluggishly developing road and rail transport.

In recent years, Mohammed Rezwan’s team has de­ veloped a programme for school boats, bringing ed­ ucation to regions cut off from country roads. The NGO Friendship has an impressive fleet of ships that bring healthcare to the most remote regions in the north and in the Bay of Bengal. The legend­ ary Rainbow Warrior, formerly used by Greenpeace, is deployed here, having been converted into a float­ ing hospital by means of expert interventions in its interior design. Moreover, the team from Friend­ ship also shows immense dedication in its efforts to aid the preservation and further development of Bangladesh’s boatbuilding tradition. With pro­ grammes that promote the restoration, mainte­ nance and new construction of ships, this organi­ sation ensures that traditional know-how is passed down to subsequent generations in a future-orient­ ed manner.

Tradition and departure

The architecture in Bangladesh seems to have a high degree of not only spatial permeability, but temporal permeability as well. When encounter­ ing the buildings in the delta for the first time, it is often impossible to precisely identify the period in which they were built, or the age of the design­ er, and it is not uncommon for an agreeable feeling of timelessness to set in. A conscious engagement with history while nevertheless designing radical­ ly modern buildings is among the great qualities of many architects. Alongside geography, history also seems to be the second important pillar on which the contemporary architectural trend is based. To­ day’s Bangladesh has only existed as a politically in­ Floating spaces dependent country since 1971, after a bloody war of independence. On the one hand, it has its roots Alongside these special forms, if the term ‘delta ar­ in centuries-old culture from the Indian subconti­ chitecture’ is to be defined somewhat more broadly, nent, yet at the same time, as a young nation, it is it is of course necessary to look beyond the actual spurred on by a dynamic sense of departure. As two

23 Curzon Hall, Dhaka, 1904 24 Constantinos A. Doxiadis, model of TeacherStu­­dent Centre, Dhaka, 1957 – 1965 25 Richard E. Vrooman, drawing of Faculty of Architecture EPUET, Dhaka, 1962 – 1966 26 Rajshahi University Library, 1966, architect Daniel C. Dunham 27 Louis I. Kahn at the Faculty of Architecture EPUET

22 ambivalent elements, tradition and departure are highly visible motivational forces in current archi­ tectural production.

If we try to get a picture of Bangladesh’s so­ cio-political sensitivities, it must constantly be kept in mind that Bangladesh is still a very young coun­ try, having emerged from the turmoil that occurred after India gained independence from the British Empire. In 1947, British India was partitioned along religious lines, forming a Hindu-dominated India and a Muslim Pakistan, which consisted of West Pa­ kistan and East Pakistan, two provincial wings that were well over a thousand kilometres apart. Islama­ bad, in the western wing, was established as the cap­ ital of all Pakistan. Dhaka (called Dacca at the time) became the administrative centre of the eastern ter­ ritory, which encompassed the eastern part of Ben­ gal, a region that the British had already partitioned in 1905. Apart from their Islamic roots, West and East Pakistan had little in common. They differed greatly in terms of climate, landscape, ethnic make­ up and language, while even their approaches to Is­ lam were not the same. East Pakistan knew mixed varieties of Islam that had little to do with the Islam­ ic state ideologies imposed from outside. The Ben­ galis spoke Bangla and opposed Urdu, which was to be imported from West Pakistan as the official national language. In the 1950s, the so-called Lan­ guage Movement was formed, a protest movement that constituted the start of East Pakistan’s efforts to gain independence. In order to counteract the latent socio-political tensions and to grant East Pa­ kistan more autonomy, the Pakistani government proposed giving Dhaka its own parliament in 1962 and Louis I. Kahn was put in charge of planning its accompanying government district. In 1971, while the lengthy construction work was still ongoing, the definitive split between West and East Pakistan finally occurred, whereupon the parliament com­ plex evolved into a symbol of a new nation.

When architects in Bangladesh seek the ‘Bengali moment’, they are naturally aware that this is not just about seeking the identity of their young country. As shown by the course of history, the Bengali cultural domain is not bound to one na­ tional territory, but also encompasses West Bengal in India, regardless of where the political bound­ aries are drawn. Thus, the scale of the cultural ex­ change between Dhaka and India’s Kolkata is cor­ respondingly large. Ultimately, there are also cul­ tural and historical links to be taken into account, which go far beyond the country ’s own native or linguistic region. Closely tied to the ‘western cul­ ture’ of the Indian subcontinent, life in the delta is influenced to no less an extent by the ‘rice culture’ of Southeast Asia. As a ‘melting pot’, the region has experienced very different cultural influences that are still present in everyday culture to this day.

Each year, around the 14th of April, when the Ben­ gali New Year is celebrated, it coincides with festiv­ ities on the Hindu calendar, thus bearing witness to the delta culture’s lively mix, far removed from religious or territorial obstinacy.

Continuity through change Even though the region where today’s Bangladesh is situated has repeatedly been shaken by dramat­ ic historical turning points and shaped by new in­ fluences, a continuity can be seen in the develop­ ment of architectural typologies, which extends from the Buddhist Pala dynasty (8th to 12th centu­ ry) to the Islamic period of the sultans (13th to 16th century), to the Mogul period (16th to 18th century), to the colonial era (18th to 20 th century) and through to the modern era, and is also strongly reflected in

contemporary movements. Thus, many architec­ 28 Kamalapur Railway Station, Dhaka, 1961 – 1964, tural elements that have always been socially and architects Daniel C. Dunham & Robert G. Boughey climatically valid – like the courtyard or veranda, 29 Paul Rudolph, drawing of Mymensingh Agricultural University, 1965 – 1975 for example – have been passed on from one cultur­ al period to the next. While their functional prin­ 30 Richard Neutra, drawing of Mymensingh Agriculciples have remained the same, such spatial devic­ tural University, 1965 –1 975 es have had their forms adapted according to the times, but have never lost their potential to create a sense of identity in typical local architecture. In particular, the Mogul period showed, in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, how different cultur­ al movements can be blended to form a new quasihybrid architectural language. Even the colonial ar­ chitecture that replaced the Mogul period from the 18th century onwards and negated the local condi­ tions in other regions was unable to elude local in­ fluences in the Ganges Delta, as demonstrated, for example, by Curzon Hall in Dhaka, with its pavil­ ion-crowned avant-corps. In the Ganges Delta, the colonial rulers even set about adding local building forms, such as the ‘bungalow’, to their vocabulary and exporting them worldwide.

On the Indian subcontinent, like in o ­ ther former colonies, the arrival of (late) modern archi­ tecture after the collapse of the colonial empire was almost like a boom. In West and East Pakistan, where architecture as a profession had not yet been insti­ tutionalised, numerous structures designed by Eu­ ropeans or Americans appeared, sometimes fund­ ed by US programmes like USAID and Ford Founda­ tion. In the early ’60s, works by the internationally active Greek architect and town planner Constanti­ nos A. Doxiadis, for instance, who designed impor­ tant buildings for education in Dhaka and Comilla, started to emerge. Larger public commissions were also realised by America’s Berger Consulting Group, with a team on which talented architects like Dan­ iel C. Dunham or Robert G. Boughey were the lead­ ing designers, whose works, such as the Kamalapur Railway Station, were bound to a climate-adjusted, sometimes orientally inspired modernism. A key role was also played by the Agricultural and Me­ chanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M Univer­ sity) and in the early ’60s it became responsible for the founding of the first faculty of architecture in Dhaka. Architects associated with Texas A&M or the Berger Group, such as Richard E. Vrooman, Dan­ iel C. Dunham and James C. Walden, were part of that faculty and were also in charge of designing buildings on the campus. The curriculum of the new architecture faculty was based on ideas from the Bauhaus and also included dance, music and lit­ erature in its courses: a legacy that can still be ob­ served in the teaching of architecture in Dhaka to­ day and, despite having adapted to international standards of architectural education, gives Benga­ li culture the status it deserves. The main building for the faculty of architecture at the East Pakistan University of Engineering and Technology (EPUET), which was renamed the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) after the war of independence, was designed by the faculty’s dean, Richard E. Vrooman, as an impressive example of tropical late modernism influenced by rationalism, and it responds to the climatic conditions with bold brise soleil and arcades. The neighbouring elegant student halls of residence, with their suspended concrete verandas, and BUET ’s gymnasium, with its brutalist spanning overhead structure, repre­ sent attempts to incorporate international modern­ ism locally. Just what the tropical climate and rich cultural history of the delta could inspire even es­ tablished Western architects to do is shown by the buildings constructed for the Agricultural Univer­ sity in Mymensingh from the mid-1960s onwards, which are among the most unconventional works

by Paul Rudolph and Richard Neutra.

23 Muzharul Islam – Pioneer of Bengali modernism

31 Muzharul Islam (1923 – 2012)

32 Institute of Fine Arts, Dhaka, 1953 – 1954, architect Muzharul Islam

Probably the most significant factor that explains 33 Student hostels at Chittagong University, 1968 – 1971, architect Muzharul Islam why, in architecture, the Bengali heritage was not

erased in the post-colonial era by the modern move­ 34 Polytechnic Institute, Bogra, 1966 –1 978, architects ment that rapidly seized the Indian subcontinent, Muzharul Islam & Stanley Tigerman

is the charismatic architect, thinker and teacher Muzharul Islam (1923 – 2012). Initially trained as an engineer, Muzharul Islam studied in Portland, Ore­ gon, from the 1950s onwards. In 1956, he attended courses on tropical architecture at A A London and, under Paul Rudolph, he obtained his postgraduate degree at Yale in 1961. Muzharul Islam advocated a modern architecture that would meet the require­ ments of the delta’s climate and culture, but with­ out descending into provincialism or unthinking internationalism.

The statement ‘ You have to be a world man and a Bengal. It’s impossible otherwise…’4 refers to his engagement with Bengali thinkers like Tagore, who contributed to world literature without aban­ doning his roots. He thus assumed a twofold link­ ing function in societal and architectural discourse.

Firstly, in his practice and teaching, he strived to mediate between tradition and the modern. Sec­ ondly, he managed to acknowledge localism and in­ ternationalism to equal extents, and to absorb them into his work. It was also in keeping with his person­ al understanding of intercultural dialogue to bring international protagonists like his teacher Paul Ru­ dolph, his classmate Stanley Tigerman and ulti­ mately Louis I. Kahn to his homeland for important construction projects, thus helping them to imple­ ment some of late modernism’s strongest works.

Muzharul Islam’s Institute of Fine Arts, built in Dhaka in 1954 as the first modern building in the delta region, is an impressive example of the sensu­ ality and radiance that the international style can blossom into under the tropical sun. Many aspects of this building, but also of later works, such as the large pavilion-like concrete structure of the Nation­ al Institute for Public Administration, the buildings constructed using local bricks for the Chittagong University, Jahangirnagar University, or the Nation­ al Archives, anticipate what is on the minds of many architects in Bangladesh today. Although he began by adhering to rather modernist and rationalist ap­ proaches based on geometric rules, it is evident that he gradually came to handle underlying typologi­ cal patterns more and more freely over the course of his career. He did con­tinue to use them as source material, but distorted them with increasing free­ dom, meticulously adapting them to the location and climate. In the National Archives in Sherebang­ lanagar, one of his last realised works, the strict source material of onion-skin-like rectangular ge­ ometry is overridden by free diagonal incisions for ventilation and illumination, leading to a surpris­ ingly new spatial experience. This unconventional montage strategy, characterised by disruptions, has certainly left its mark on the approaches taken by subsequent generations.

However, Islam was not only interested in buildings themselves: he considered it equally important to equip the delta region with higherlevel plans for the future and to research new set­ tlement patterns. Alongside the master plans for the universities in Chittagong and Savar, he also worked out designs for Dhaka’s urban planning.

When viewed today, his settlement designs for ru­ ral areas, a field previously ignored by architects and planners, are particularly notable and once again demonstrate how holistically Muzharul Is­ lam wanted to lead his country into the future.

The design for family flats in Joypurhat and the staff residences at Jahangirnagar University show

35 Jahangirnagar University, Savar, 1967 – 1971, architect Muzharul Islam 36 Joypurhat Limestone Mining and Cement Works Housing, 1978 – 1984, architect Muzharul Islam 37 National Archives, Dhaka, 1978 – 1984, architect Muzharul Islam 38 National Institute of Public Administration, Dhaka, 1965 – 1969, architect Muzharul Islam

24 multi-storey jagged settlement typologies that es­ tablished identity-forming sub-centres in the open countryside, conveying both a rural and an urban element in equal measure. The extent to which Mu­ zharul Islam strove to bring the young nation for­ wards, both socially and in terms of planning, can be inferred from the fact that he eventually chose to get into politics. He had become aware of the rapid developments that would soon sweep across his homeland and he aspired to provide the neces­ sary social foundations for the architecture that was to come. It is tragically ironic that, with his decidedly political stance, he took away his own basis for receiving commissions. However, by get­ ting involved in socio-political fields, he certainly gave his successors a reminder to not see architec­ ture as an end in itself, but to always think about it in dialogue with society.

It was also Muzharul Islam who, in a selfless and forward-looking manner, despite the state’s request, declined to personally plan the new gov­ ernment district in what was then East Pakistan and instead brought Louis I. Kahn into the coun­ try for this project. This paved the way for the con­ struction of one of the most impressive buildings of the 20 th century. Not only the portentous connec­ tion with the birth of a new nation, which occurred right when the government district was being built, but also Kahn’s masterful conversion of local ele­ ments into a new architectural language ensured that the structures in Sherebanglanagar remain a fixed point of reference for the work of many ar­ chitects in Bangladesh to this day. In some respects, the significance of this work resides in the subtle balance that harmonises very different design fac­ tors. Based on the foundations of history, aspects of the cultural and geographical context, as well as typological or functional aspects, were incorporat­ ed just as masterfully as tectonic or structural mat­ ters. Landscape-related elements like the expans­ es of water surrounded by archaic brick buildings, the raising of a plinth, or the installation of steps and bridges, refer to the delta’s building culture in exemplary manner. The parliament building itself resembles a condensed arrangement of the Benga­ li courtyard structure and, as a large free-standing form, is essentially nothing other than a giant pa­ vilion, reflecting the delta’s primordial settlement form. The integration of a mosque into the com­ plex, as proposed by Kahn, also makes spiritual ref­ erences that go beyond these worldly aspects. The mosque’s slight rotation away from the main axis, enabling prayers to be conducted facing Mecca, rids the complex of any rigidity. Perhaps this is also to be read as a sign that, rather than the state’s consti­ tution being oriented towards religion, the two co­ exist independently of each other. Even though this masterpiece contains many tangible references to the context of the Ganges Delta, it offers a univer­ sally comprehensible abstraction that operates be­ yond citations or images. Using light and structure as tools, Louis Kahn created a complex ­entity with an entirely unusual spatial­ity that is still endless­ ly fascinating today, and with magical light guid­ ance that remains unrivalled in recent architectur­ al history.

Chetana Society: From Pundranagar to Sherebanglanagar and beyond Another lasting part of Muzharul Islam’s legacy, be­ yond the drawing board and the construction site, was the forming of the so-called Chetana Study Group, the thoughts and actions of which have played a major role in helping to shape architec­ ture as a still young profession in Bangladesh over

the past decades. Many of the architects working today obtained their education at BUET under the influence of modernism and American teachings, and were already preparing, during their studies and the start of their careers, to search for an archi­ tectural identity that is more strongly oriented to­ wards the specific vocational conditions in the del­ ta. Full of questions, a group of students and young architects sought an exchange with their great role model Muzharul Islam, so as to approach the ‘Ben­ gali moment’in architecture through dialogue with him. What began informally as a study group in the 1980s was later made official, as the Chetana Socie­ ty. Chetana held regular discussion evenings, sem­ inars and symposiums. Around the 1990s, under the name Sthapatya Bangladesh (Architecture of Bangladesh), it started searching for its own roots by means of drawing. In 1997, this very meticulous surveying of the past led to the exhibition Pundran­ agar to Sherebanglanagar – Architecture in Bangla­ desh and an eponymous publication. Not only due to its magical drawings, but also because its scope spans centuries, from the first Buddhist monas­ tery complexes through to Louis Kahn’s parliament building, revealing epochal relationships, this pub­ lication, initiated by Chetana, can be seen as an es­ sential work in any architecture library pertaining to the delta, even today, 20 years after its release.

Architecture, which was not included in the tertiary education programme as an independ­ ent discipline until the 1960s, is still a very young profession in Bangladesh. For Muzharul Islam and his companions, the first step was most of all to es­ tablish the profession in society. In their first real­ ised projects, figures like Bashirul Haq, Uttam Kumar Saha, Raziul Ahsan and Shamsul Wares showed how differently the rediscovered historical herit­ age can be handled. Based on the big main objec­ tives of a tropical modernism with local roots, they demonstrated varieties that went in very different directions, reaching out like branches of a river and slowly beginning to penetrate society.

Raziul Ahsan’s avoidance of large forms and his meticulous engagement with the microcon­ text, but also the early works of Diagram Architects helped to ensure that even larger institutional fa­ cilities remained close enough to the population’s identity, with a certain granularity and a free han­ dling of geometries. For example, in contrast to Mu­ zharul Islam’s underlying cubic approach, pitched roof forms and roof overhangs also became a theme.

Thus, links with the delta-specific lalkik tradition were established, blending the vernacular with the monumental and the folkloric with the abstract, in addition to superimposing the curved boat-shaped chala roof form on strict floor-plan arrangements.

Under the pressure to develop caused by the neo­ liberalism engulfing the world in the 1990s, the ur­ ban conurbations of Dhaka, Chittagong and Khul­ na in particular were confronted with an enor­ mous construction boom and demand for an in­ ternational lifestyle. Even though this has resulted in a huge volume of unthinkingly imported archi­ tectures in steel, glass and exposed concrete, archi­ tects like Rafiq Azam, Ehsan Khan or Nahas ­Khalil understand how to inject local genes even into in­ vestors’ projects, and to design much more than sterile shoeboxes. Nahas Khalil, for example, is convinced that little culturally specific changes are what make architecture valuable, even in a restric­ tive environment. When he fights to ensure that ground floors in dense urban areas remain open and possible to use for communal spaces or chil­ dren’s playgrounds, this is due to memories from his youth in the open fields by the Brahmaputra: he does not want to deprive future urban generations of such an experience.

39 Louis I. Kahn, sketch of Assembly Building 40 The Capitol Complex under construction 41 Poster announcing a workshop organised by the Chetana Study Group, 1987 42 Invitation to the exhibition ‘From Pundra­nagar to Sherebanglanagar’, 1997 43 Drawing of Kantanagar Temple in the publication ‘From Pundranagar to Shere­banglanagar’, 1997

25 Typological transfer on the humus of history The relationship between contemporary and his­ torical architecture is not based on absorption of forms or on mimesis, but on structural principles that are anchored in the constants of geography and climate.

Recourse to the essentials, or to the DNA of construction in the delta, so to speak, establishes affinities that span epochs, positioning buildings from very different programmes within one over­ riding context. In this regard, underlying typologies are not blindly absorbed, but critically scrutinised, developed further, modulated, and adapted to to­ day’s requirements and challenges. In essence, the partly time-honoured underlying typology proven in the delta is source material that gets adapted to dynamic societal developments. Naturally, the bal­ ancing act between past and present, and between assimilation and difference, is not easy. In order to avoid the trap of simplistic citationality, persistent searching and subtle design skills are necessary. Ar­ chitects often perform a tightrope walk, exploring the extent to which they dare to move away from history or from their architectural father figures, and sometimes all that remains of the origins is in­ deed just the skeleton or DNA, on which radically new ground can be broken. The construction pro­ jects handled on the basis of the pavilion typology’s principles differ greatly: from the touristic visitor centre to the new production hall, to the school and through to the weekend home. Today, the un­ derlying cylindrical motif of the historical stupa can be recognised in such diverse structures as a hotel building or a contemporary art centre’s re­ ception building.

The fact that the key to designing contem­ porary and future-oriented structures can paradox­ ically reside in the past is demonstrable, for exam­ ple, with regard to mosque construction, in which the strategy of typology transfer is clearly evident.

Today, it can perhaps be somewhat astonishing at first glance to see that mosques are built with­ out minarets or domes in a country with a most­ ly Muslim population. However, the designers of new houses of prayer know what they are convey­ ing through their work, because their buildings are based on fundamental knowledge about their cultural origins and the history of their homeland, as well as a universal understanding of architec­ ture. Especially in rapidly developing faceless ur­ ban agglomerations, mosques perform communi­ ty-building functions that go beyond prayer itself and, sometimes just for space-saving reasons, must allow different activities for the neighbourhood’s residents. Here, the designers go back to the be­ ginnings of mosque construction, when the houses of prayer, with their open spatial structures, were used as places of daily exchange and even served as market halls. This original type of mosque, which was basically a simple multipurpose building, had neither domes nor minarets. Once again, a building type here in the delta harks back to the porous ar­ chetype of the chala. The early mosques from the era of the Islamic sultanate were not self-referen­ tial structures surrounded by walls, as seen in much of the Islamic hemisphere, but free-standing pavil­ ions in the landscape, which opened up to their sur­ roundings spatially. The mosques designed by Mari­ na Tabassum, Kashef Chowdhury or Archeground in the Dhaka metropolitan area in Chittagong or Barishal draw on something primordial to create spiritual places that make do without symbols and express central elements of mosque construction with purely spatial and architectural means.

However, recollecting the elementary does much more than just reflect history: the layout of

the space allocation plan, masterful play with the 44 SOS Youth Village Mirpur, Dhaka, architect Raziul Ahsan abstract laws of elementary geometry, a minimal­ ism-oriented reduction of means, or the adept in­ 45 Education Centre near Mymensingh, architect corporation of climatic conditions make many re­ Uttam Kumar Saha cent mosques radically modern and even timeless 46 Banchte Shekha Training Centre, Jessore, architects Saif Ul Haque / Diagram Architects architectures.

A living past The young nation’s high degree of historical aware­ ness is also demonstrated by the fact that construc­ tion projects thematising the processing of history’s darker sides have had to be tackled in recent years.

The Museum of Independence in Dhaka, designed

by URBANA, and the Liberation War Monument in Mohishkhola by Rajon Das are works that exude con­ fidence with quiet abstraction and show that archi­ tecture can help to come to terms with history with­ out descending into heavy-hearted reactionary pat­ riotism. One interesting aspect of such structures is that they do not stand silent and isolated in the landscape or urban space as pure monuments, but function as walk-in sculptures. Lowering the Muse­ um of Independence below ground enabled the his­ tory-steeped Ramna Park site in the heart of Dhaka to be retained as a large public open space. Its roof is elevated slightly above ground, integrated into the park ’s network of paths as a platform, where people stroll around enjoying the play of clouds re­ flected in the nearby water body. For many visitors, contact with history occurs here in a rather inci­ dental way and not through any forced instructive confrontation. The extent to which painful mem­ ories become visible in the underground chamber is matched by the extent to which the plaza above, with its Tower of Light, appears cheerful and hope­ ful. In the chosen cross-section solution, and thus with architectural means, the double-edged genius loci of Ramna Park, which is very closely linked to the start and end of the 1971 war of independence, is very pointedly made apparent.

There is also an ever-increasing effort to maintain the built heritage, despite the scarcity of financial resources. Initiatives by architect Tai­ mur Islam and the Urban Study Group are bring­ ing about the preservation and renovation of state­ ly mansions in Old Dhaka. Alongside old religious monuments, preservation efforts are slowly begin­ ning to focus on modernist works as well, albeit far too rarely. Once again, those who are tireless­ ly striving to extract the necessary support from the state are architects. One recent phenomenon, the conversion of buildings, like in the case of the Bengal Museum project involving transformation of an industrial site, shows that there is no longer a will to abandon everything to decay or to the wrecking ball once it has aged in the harsh abra­ sive climate or has whetted the appetite of hungry building tycoons.

De-densification Even though today’s architecture has a pool of his­ tory that it can draw from, it has recently had to provide very apt responses to new questions that have arisen, regarding life in dense cities, and prob­ lems associated with infrastructure and transport.

Although around 75 % of the population still lives in rural areas, a city like Dhaka has become the embodiment of hyperdensity. With an estimated 18 million or so inhabitants already, the growth of this tropical Moloch on the verge of collapse is unpredictable. According to relevant sources, up to 5,000 newcomers from rural regions settle in Dhaka every day, while projections and forecasts

47 Elevation of Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka, 2012 48 Elevation of Choto Sona Mosque, Nawabganj, 15th century AD

26 suggest that the urban region by the Buriganga River will have almost 30 million residents by the year 2030. Today, Dhaka has an average population density of more than 25,000 inhabitants per square kilometre and in parts of Old Dhaka, it might even be high enough to break the world record. Com­ pared to the numbers of Zurich or Berlin, at around 4,000 inhabitants per square kilometre, one can im­ agine the extent of the social and urban challeng­ es Dhaka is currently facing. Once more intelligent architectural approaches are in need that exceed technocratic land administration strategies and explore new ways of dealing with density.

Anyone looking at illustrations or photo­ graphs of Dhaka from the start or middle of the 20th century might rub their eyes in disbelief to see the evident qualities of the urban space in the form of gardens, river courses, waterfront prome­ nades and mansions surrounded by palms. Quali­ ties once provided by vegetation, lakes and canals in the pre-modern scenery of the cityscape now have to be implemented in the buildings themselves be­ cause large publicly accessible open spaces are be­ coming increasingly rare. Recent proposals for ur­ ban residential or office high-rises show that there is also a tropical alternative to the box-shaped build­ ings that have been repeated ad infinitum up to now: an alternative that makes it possible for resi­ dents to have a high quality of life in a high-density environment. Jagged floor-plan configurations and overhangs in cross-section solutions are utilised as a means to transpose air circulation and green ar­ eas to the vertical, and to produce an enlarged sur­ face area that is conducive to cooling.

In view of Dhaka’s horrendous land prices, it is easy to imagine how delicate the situation must be for designers trying to find the right balance be­ tween the wanted exploitation and the necessary ‘de-densification’. Many architects rely on low-tech approaches for urban buildings because the build­ ings’ air conditioning must also work during the frequent power cuts. The pavilion typology some­ times plays a central role in these strategies. The stacking of cell-like units achieves more than just the desired increase in surface area: large residen­ tial towers like the Aakash building in Banani or the 17-storey Hasnahena tower in Dhanmondi also have a delicate sense of scale embedded in them, which smoothly divides the interior spaces into zones and efficiently enhances the façade surfaces’ self-shading effect. In a Café Mango branch, built in cramped conditions, Salauddin Ahmed from At­ elier Robin has also implemented water and green­ ery, thus attracting a colourful mixed crowd of city residents plagued by dust and noise.

People in Bangladesh, and especially in Dha­ ka, are used to cramped coexistence and high den­ sities, perhaps also for socio-historical and demo­ graphic reasons. However, the modernisation of society has naturally caused spatial requirements to change. For years, urbanists like Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, whose book Designing Dhaka – A Mani­ festo For A Better City demonstrates a handful of measures with which to rescue Dhaka, have been striving to raise awareness among the populace, politicians and planning offices, in the interests of improving the quality of life in this metropolis, which suffers from traffic and air pollution. The first implemented large-scale projects, such as VIT­ TI Sthapati’s Integrated Development of Hatirjheel Area, are positive indications that changes can be made. It is increasingly the architects and their pro­ fessional associations who, as voices of criticism, have the courage to publicly question the state’s planning system and the government’s sometimes crude plans. People are no longer willing to take last place in city rankings and to scrape by in a city that,

49 Population growth of Bangladesh 50 Population of Bangladesh 2017 51 Population density per km2 of Dhaka 52 Waterbody in Dhaka 53 The dense fabric of Old Dhaka

54 Population growth of Switzerland 55 Population of Switzer­land 2017 56 Population density per km2 of Zurich 57 View over Dhaka City 58 Historical image of Dhaka’s Buriganga river front. 1847

27 according to an Economist Intelligence Unit study, offers the worst quality of life in the world.

Saif Ul Haque, who alongside his work as an architect has intensively addressed settlement con­ struction and architecture mediation, has the fol­ lowing suggestion: ‘Let us try to bridge the gap be­ tween politicians and architects.’5 Due to the exist­ ing fragments around the urban waterbodies like Dhanmondi Lake or Gulshan Lake, the potential of Dhaka’s cityscape, in which tree-lined waterways and the incessant back-and-forth of rickshaws and boats can exude a magic from One Thousand and One Nights, is all too apparent. With its commu­ nicativeness, the population could easily breathe colourful life into the public spaces.

Alongside successful large-scale projects like the Hatirjheel Development, which take years to plan and implement, an increasing number of smaller urban interventions are becoming visi­ ble, effectively revitalising the urban fabric. The gently modelled brick topography of the newly shaped surroundings at the University of Dhaka by ­Sthanik Consultants or a plaza populated with emblematic pavilions by URBANA in the dense con­ sumer district of Banani are oases that reclaim ur­ ban open spaces as places to spend time, and might show the way ahead for public and private devel­ opers alike. In a city where the once freely acces­ sible central green area around the government district currently remains closed off for security reasons, such interventions, selectively scattered about the urban space, appear to be an appropri­ ate strategy for making overdue changes within a reasonable timeframe. Important improvements are also made by means of very small infrastruc­ tural interventions, with fountains and public toi­ lets, which are now among architects’ tasks. An­ other decisive step towards improving the quality of life is the ongoing relocation of the large tanner­ ies that have been situated centrally until now, con­ taminating the city’s waterbodies. These are now finding a new home within modernised infrastruc­ tures outside the city ’s core.

New urban visions, linked to existing vital lines like Gulshan Avenue and the Buriganga riv­ erbank, have recently been presented in public by the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements at the highly regarded exhibition Next Dhaka – New Visions of the City. With visual­ ly powerful renderings and models, the makers at­ tracted the attention of politicians and the pub­ lic, triggering wide-ranging discussion. An ideas competition for interventions in the urban space on Mirpur Road is also a positive indication that in the bureaucracy-dominated urban planning circles, there seems to be an increased interest in the cre­ ative approaches of freelance colleagues. Competi­ tions on public ground are still rare, but the Insti­ tute of Architects Bangladesh (IAB), the scene’s of­ ficial mouthpiece, is tirelessly fighting for the nec­ essary legal basis to finally be put in place.

Another field that architects have to ad­ dress in cities is the establishment of mass housing.

Today, there is no state policy on residential con­ struction, nor are there many established typolo­ gies for housing estates. The urban areas have an underlying compartmentalised ownership struc­ ture consisting of individual plots, which makes cohesive residential complexes impossible. How­ ever, ideas like those of Bashirul Haq, who has re­ searched this topic in relation to his design for the Kalindi Housing Complex, for instance, might hopefully soon be recognised by larger developers and by the state as alternatives to the informal set­ tlement or the residential high-rise.

Probably the most urgent problem to solve in Dhaka though, is that of the infrastructure and

transport. As the infrastructure can now barely keep up with the city ’s rapid growth and the in­ crease in private transport, the gruelling experi­ ence of waiting for hours in traffic jams is not un­ common. Today, public transport is only provid­ ed by means of buses, which are a highly sluggish mode of transport, given the daily traffic disrup­ tions. It is to be hoped that the overhead railway, which is now finally under construction, will soon ease the burden and that the water can also be re­ activated more as a transport route, because every day, traffic jams on Dhaka’s roads waste thousands upon thousands of productive hours and signifi­ cantly reduce the quality of life.

Decentralisation Ultimately, the only way to really alleviate this city, which is bursting at the seams, is with a strate­ gy that is coordinated nationwide, establishing at­ tractive decentralised sub-centres and preventing Dhaka from continuing to be overrun by rural refu­ gees. As has been urgently noted in the correspond­ ing debate, discussions about the development of urban regions cannot take place without earnest incorporation of rural regions. Strengthening the rural regions would automatically decrease the ap­ peal of large urban centres – so improving the ru­ ral living conditions, which are currently seen as unattractive in many places, can help not only the rural population itself, but also the city dwellers who are feeling the strain. Naturally, making ru­ ral life more attractive requires immense political and economic effort. Education, employment and healthcare are in need of decentralisation and it is necessary to give more consideration to contempo­ rary settlement forms and building types in rural areas, so as to curb the ‘urban turn’, a trend seem­ ingly inevitable today, which is solely oriented to­ wards large conurbations.

The fact that, as of 2008, more than 50 % of the world’s population lives in urban conurbations represents a twofold challenge in Bangladesh’s case.

For one thing, the hyperdensities of Dhaka and ­other conurbations have to be dealt with and, at the same time, or more than ever, it must not be for­ gotten that around 75 % of Bangladeshis still live in rural areas. This is why many architects intensively address the question of how the rural population’s ways of life can be given due respect in approaches to planning. Discussions on how rural architectur­ al and settlement forms can be gently prepared for the future without throwing their qualities over­ board are not yet commonplace in the context of settlement policy or land-use planning, but there are signs that these topics are gradually becoming key agenda items for universities and institutions.

Bangladesh, where the annually flooded lowlands have so far been largely excluded from building developments, is yet to see urban sprawl on a large scale. However, as the rural regions near cities will soon come under intense agglomeration pressure, debate on conceiving alternatives to ur­ ban sprawl is beneficial. Research and project work currently being conducted by the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements, by BRAC University or by BUET, show that strategies to this end could, in turn, be applied within local tradition, in which a high degree of community spirit, the sharing of spaces, and cluster-like village structures are common. In many visions of settle­ ments that exist in the form of collages and mod­ els for the time being, a sort of urban landscape is apparent, bringing watercourses, green areas and air circulation into harmony with dense building developments. Here, the search for an adequate

59 Aakash Prodeep Residential Tower in Banani, Dhaka, architect Nahas Khalil 60 Competition proposal for RAJUK Headquarters, Dhaka, architect Marina Tabassum 61 Hasnahena Residential Tower in Dhanmondi, Dhaka, architect Nahas Khalil 62 Kalindi Housing Complex in Farmgate, Dhaka, architect Bashirul Haq 63 South Zahir Residential Tower in Dhanmondi, Dhaka, architect Md. Rafiq Azam

28 settlement strategy that takes the long-deserved entitlements of the rural population into account ranges from reinterpretation of the traditional homestead to medium-density honeycombed car­ pet settlements and through to large-scale vertical forms. Starting points are not only to be found in the evolved image of the settlement: a kind of me­ dium-density landscape town can also be seen in approaches tried in pioneering ways from the late 1970s onwards by Muzharul Islam, Shamsul Wares, Raziul Ahsan and Diagram Architects.

Certainly, there are not yet any absolute an­ swers to the question of how contemporary and fu­ ture rural settlement forms could look, but there are some visions and early realised examples that offer different directions for a promising journey.

Projects that take existing village struc­ tures as source material and combine them with new elements are currently appearing near Jes­ sore, not too far of the endless mangrove forests of the Sundarbans. Khondaker Hasibul Kabir, who is overseeing a project in Jhenaidah, is convinced that sustainable settlement development can only happen in small steps and not without close coop­ eration with the residents. This architect believes that the population has to be made aware that al­ though their settlements, built without ‘planning’, are essentially good, there is still a lot of untapped architectural potential.

Frequently, planners who work in rural re­ gions consciously hark back to traditional build­ ing techniques that use clay and bamboo, show­ ing the population that these have considerable advantages over the more-and-more fashionable corrugated sheet-metal huts or the thermally in­ adequate single-shell brick houses. Ultimately, it also has to be made clear that the supposedly sta­ tus-enhancing imports from urban regions are not really sustainable in comparison to time-honoured practice, and that with spatial improvements, a house made of local construction materials can also be a dignified place to live and work. In re­ cent years, the Panigram eco-resort with comfort­ able clay buildings was constructed some distance from Sundarbans, bringing gentle tourism into the area, which prompts dialogue and interaction be­ tween the guests and the locals. This is boosting local manual skilled trades and creating jobs in the tourism sector, which reduces economically motivated migration to the city. Another interest­ ing approach, envisaging the installation of rural sub-centres, has been pursued by the NGO Friend­ ship. Its training and education centre in North­ ern Bangladesh and a hospital in the south of the country present a compact spatial arrangement of brick buildings that encompasses both the village scale and the urban scale at the same time, bridg­ ing the gap between a rural culture and an urban culture, so to speak. Such an approach not only brings indispensable durability, it also gives the scattered surrounding settlements a place that cre­ ates a sense of identity.

When it comes to construction, the regions in the extensive northern river landscapes pose a quite exceptional challenge. Here, the enormous volumes of water take an unpredictable course and break up the silty ground, turning it into a sea with thousands of tiny islands. Every year, this causes huge sections of the population to lose their land, along with their housing and belongings. Various architectural strategies have recently looked into ways of making settlement more secure and per­ manent on these islands, known as river chars. Ex­ amples, such as Cluster Village Development and the Raised Settlements in the Jamuna River system, show that even established architects based in Dha­ ka by no means only address the urban: they engage

just as intensively with the rural and the landscape.

In particular, the Raised Settlement project in Gai­ bandha, in which building ground is safeguard­ ed by a drop-shaped land fill, impressively demon­ strates that architecture, settlement construction and landscape architecture are inseparably inter­ woven in Bangladesh. Moreover, it also shows that in Bangladesh, the water has to be spatially thema­ tised just as strongly as the land masses. Planners and architects are aware that projects can only be successful if their designs are not against the cur­ rent, but with it. In addition to adept handling of plinths or dams, there are also designs that show the use of pilotis, which allow the water and land­ scape maximum flow. A touristic visitor centre, de­ signed as a prototype and realised, for instance, in the national park near Teknaf, and the Shuktara Resort in Sylhet are just two of many recent exam­ ples showing that an isolated foundation is a prac­ tical way of leaving an appropriate amount of space for nature in a wide variety of different topograph­ ical situations. Water does not only determine the base level for design in the landscape, but rather is present in many building complexes in the shape of slender water towers. In these carefully designed sculptures the horizontality of the landscape finds an emblematic vertical counterpoint in the z-axis.

In such volumetric gestures and in monsoon-proof roof and window detailing water even becomes a three-dimensional design factor.

High and low Due to the enormous differences between city and countryside, as well as the resulting immense in­ come gap currently threatening to tear the country apart, Bangladesh’s architects are more compelled than ever to become familiar with a wide range of different professional spheres and to take the lead in multi-disciplinary teams. Most Bangladesh­ is and many of the players active in Dhaka today, who grew up in rural regions themselves, have firsthand experience of the diverging realities of city and countryside. Accordingly, they also have no res­ ervations about working in a range of very differ­ ent fields. In this regard, architect Saif Ul Haque says: ‘Whatever comes your way, it is a challeng­ ing experience.’ 6 Low-cost, environmental or social projects are often undertaken by the same individ­ uals who have also been getting commissions from the urban high-end price segment in recent times.

The architects do not reserve their design skills for a select few wealthy clients or for the very visibly growing middle class. Architecture serves the pen­ niless to an equal extent. The words of the charis­ matic Runa Khan, who focuses on the constructive effect of high-quality architecture in her dedicat­ ed work as Executive Director of the aid organisa­ tion Friendship, pithily convey what is inherent in many architects’ work ethic: ‘The poor cannot af­ ford poor solutions’7. Simple means are used to cre­ ate living environments that are not just pragmatic and functional, but also have sensible structural de­ tails with good proportions and atmospheric light guidance, lending a sense of dignity and respect to even the most basic of living conditions.

Many architects are not solely involved in planning. In many projects, they act as project initi­ators or help to raise the funds. This reflects a belief that with good architecture, it is possible to make a relevant contribution to society.

In this context though, architecture does not always have to express itself in grand gestures.

Architectural thinking sometimes manifests itself in almost invisible subtle measures that draw on, and improve, what is already in place. The rebuilding of

64 Public spaces around Lake Hatirjheel 65 Mirpur Road, one of Dhaka’s crowded veins 66 Decentralising Dhaka, Bengal Institute, Dhaka Nexus conceptual scheme 67 Proposal for a public space at Gulshan II circle, Bengal Institute, Next Dhaka urban study

29 slum settlements gutted by fire, as coordinated by architect Afroza Ahmed from J. A. Architects, and the projects for children and youths initiated by the Paraa collective take a participatory approach, seek­ ing to make small improvements, step by step. To­ gether with those affected, solutions are discussed that are far removed from the top-down logic of a master plan and instead put the bottom-up concept into practice in an exemplary manner.

‘Architecture is successful when my signa­ ture is not visible anymore. Sometimes architecture is a work in the shadow and an architect must know when he does not need to intervene.’ 8 With these words, Khondaker Hasibul Kabir puts the attitude held by many of his professional colleagues in a nut­ shell. He is also convinced that architectural think­ ing can only get a foothold in society via very tight integration of occupants and with so-called ‘cocrea­tion’, because most of Bangladesh’s buildings are still made without architects. When Hasibul Kabir says ‘We do not learn architecture from uni­ versities,’ pitches his own tent in Karail Basti, Dha­ ka’s largest slum, and works together with the local residents, who live in labyrinthine conditions, to in­ stall a communal zone in the form of a garden and a bamboo platform on Banani Lake, this is not just social commitment, but also an enormously pow­ erful and groundbreaking gesture with regard to the urban space.

Projects by Simple Action for the Environ­ ment (SAFE) also follow a similar participatory log­ ic. Improvement of vernacular techniques in coop­ eration with occupants gives rise to natural build­ ings beyond auteur architecture. Along these lines, the aforementioned cluster villages by J. A. Archi­ tects in the north of the country also make funda­ mental contributions, using the clever strategy of a modular system to create identity-forming living environments for the poorest of the poor, who are robbed of their livelihoods by river erosion. With efforts like these, the architecture scene achieves a very high degree of credibility and proves that so­ cially relevant contributions can be made with ar­ chitectural spatial means. The cyclone shelters cur­ rently being built in Kuakata, where the client and the architect adopt the ‘open source’ prin­ciple, of­ fering to make the plans available to everyone af­ ter completion of the first prototype, serve as an­ other example of how good architecture can be made accessible to a large, often penniless section of the population.

Pragmatic poetry In particular, the members of the youngest gener­ ation, who are currently setting about implement­ ing the first works of their own, seem to be espe­ cially aware of the potential of simplicity. Many de­ but works border on the installational and ephem­ eral, developing a pragmatic charm. Vernacular architectures from rural areas serve young archi­ tects as points of reference. In the hands of young architects, a task like the design of simple residen­ tial buildings to protect the rural population dur­ ing storm periods can emerge as a domain for spa­ tial experimentation. Experimental structures by Ahammad-Al-Muhaymin and Building Trust Bang­ ladesh, on swathes of land where heavy construc­ tion materials are not a practical option, prove that lightweight bamboo structures can be made storm­ proof, while also achieving highly unconvention­ al expressiveness and iconography. The makeshift solution for S. R. Government Girls High School in Rajshahi District clearly shows how graceful even the most pragmatic problem-solving approach­ es can become. A short-term replacement was

68 Community upgrading project in Jhenaidah, archi- tect Khondaker Hasibul Kabir

69 Molding of the plinth for a raised settlement in the Ja- muna river network, architect Kashef Chowdhury 70 Areal view of river chars

71 Integrated Handloom Centre, proposal, Tasmia Kamal, BRAC University

72 Cluster village in the river char area of Gaibandha 73 Panigram Eco Resort 74 House, Cluster, Matrix, proposal, Samira Awal Trisha, design workshop Bengal Institute 75 Bio-inspired computational design approach to compact living, Reshma Talukder Toma, BUET 76 Rethinking the Rural, proposal, Faisal Huda, design workshop Bengal Institute

30 required for a storm-damaged school building, so the team of architects at GHORAMI.JON quickly ar­ ranged for village residents and schoolgirls to cov­ er a simple bamboo structure with waterproofed tarpaulins reminiscent of colourful saris. In light of how limited the budgets are for this and many ­other valu­able architectures, it is evident that spa­ tial richness, good proportions and poetic expres­ sion are not primarily a matter of money, but arise from trust in architectural means.

Alongside the incorporation of rural para­ digms, references to urban conurbations’ omni­ present smallest-scale architecture are also made.

These informal interventions, such as tea stalls or push carts, which are vitally important for basic daily services, strongly characterise the streetscape and give it a certain vitality. When cafés and cul­ tural spaces made of bamboo or recycled materials emerge in the middle of Dhaka, this is not a con­ tradiction, but an architectural manifestation an­ chored in two worlds that are well-known to Bang­ ladeshis. Small-scale architectures and interior de­ signs are lent an unconventional aesthetic by brass lamps and other readymades that come from the southern ship-breaking yards of Chittagong, where, by means of highly hazardous manual labour, dis­ carded freighters and oil tankers from all around the world are meticulously taken to pieces, which are put to new uses. At the very latest, this is where the relaxed manner in which global floating debris gets reshaped and integrated into local everyday life in Bangladesh becomes evident. Many contem­ porary buildings let themselves be appropriated by everyday improvisations, facilitating this with a robust open structure that positively invites uti­ lisation. Quite deliberately, in the Bangladesh Mo­ hila Samity complex, which is actually a building for theatre and music, the open ground floor is not assigned any fixed function – and this is grateful­ ly acknowledged by market operators. In many of today’s buildings, notation and improvisation sup­ plement each other in life-affirming ways, not un­ related to raga culture.

Local action with global relevance Much of what defines the relevance of Bangla­ desh’s contemporary architecture can sometimes be explained by the specific geography and che­ quered history of this still-young country. Never­ theless, Bangladesh cannot be dismissed as a special case. The multitude of difficult, globally caused is­ sues that the population and planners have to ad­ dress locally are precisely what makes Bangladesh a universal case study. The thinking of a previously small architecture movement could thus become a global model for architectural action. One of the great accomplishments of the contemporary archi­ tecture movement in Bangladesh is that impasses and a plethora of exceptional cases occurring dai­ ly do not lead to lethargy or resignation, but are in­ stead given a spatial and architectural potency in highly creative and intelligent approaches. For in­ stance, the tropical climate or limitations regarding the procurement of materials and the transport of goods are not primarily perceived as cumbersome constraints, but seen as driving forces for sustain­ able solutions. The return to local and traditional materials and processing techniques is increasing.

Climatic challenges are being met, not with tech­ nology, but with a low-tech or no-tech mindset, us­ ing spatial and structural means.

The high relevance of Bangladesh’s archi­ tecture is also certifiable because it places trust in proto-architectural means, such as space, light and proportion. Regardless of economic or technical

77 Bamboo workshop Design-Build-Play at Leedo Peace Home, architects PARAA 78 Ashar Macha Platform of Hope on Lake Banani, architect Khondaker Hasibul Kabir 79 Emergency Shelter for Girls High School, Rajshahi District, architects GHORAMI.JON 80 Tea stall on Lake Dhanmondi: Microarchitecture for everyday needs 81 Ship breaking yards in Chittagong