A benchmark for design in Dhaka

The Forum is an urban plaza that won’t be overshadowed by the city’s tallest twin towers

By: One Landscape Design Limited

Designed to create a striking urban plaza in front of the tallest twin-tower in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Forum hopes to become a place where people can congregate with friends or family. Along with the building, the landscapes plaza plans to redefine Dhaka’s open space and create a new benchmark for highly considered design in the city.

The design idea was to create a plaza that is truly an extension of the commercial building in both design language and function. It is as if the ground is a series of landforms, the tallest and grandest among them being the building itself. Inspired by the striking triangular profile of the crown as well as the dynamic roof profile of the grand lobby of the building, the landscape design was envisaged as a sculpture plaza with trapezoidal forms as skylights, planters and water cascades. These trapezoidal forms not only brought ample sunlight to the basements below but also glowed as subterranean lamps at night. Their non-transparent surfaces were further articulated by the bamboo planters that swayed on a windy day and water surfaces that glittered on a sunny morning. These forms, though primarily functional to bring light to the parking area, became embellished through design on the urban canvas, where softscape, hardscape and waterscape are displayed as a composition in complete harmony. To carry and extend the triangular geometry narrative further, with the plaza being primarily a mineral space, the paving pattern was conceived as an intricate interplay of stone and embedded light in the form of triangles. At night the plaza imitates a clear night sky with its numerous stars spread in the ground as simmering confetti.

The landscape design intervention for this project was further extended to the spectacular glass lobby, blurring the boundary between inside and outside, in addition to the streetscape where the site boundary dissolved into a sculptural and dynamic edge statement.

Along the street edge, instead of a formal boundary wall, interplay of repetitive triangular forms with alternate softscape and hardscape treatment was created to ensure the design idea flowed freely and integrated itself with the overall city fabric. The walking experience in front of this project was thus transformed from walking along a closed boundary to walking along a linear sculpture garden where the triangular forms rose and fell in perfect rhythm, culminating finally to the landmark sculpture of a building.

Inside the lobby, planters inspired by triangular forms of the core design language were strategically placed reinforcing further the intent of the landscape in connecting the outdoor to the indoor.

Meanwhile, the roof garden was envisaged as a greener abstraction of the plaza. Dotted with extruded triangles as planters with integrated seating and the same bamboo planting as the plaza below, it is a garden in the sky for the office goers to enjoy the panoramic view of the adjacent lake and the city beyond.

Project Name: Forum, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Designer Credit: One Landscape Design Limited

Client: Shanta Holdings Ltd.

Company Role on Project: Landscape Architect

Collaborators/Other Consultants:

Architect: Ehsan Khan Architects