Adnan Zillur Morshed

THE GRUDGING URBANIST

Adnan Zillur Morshed, PhD, is an architect, architectural historian, urbanist, and public intellectual. He is a professor of architecture and architectural history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and executive director of the Centre for Inclusive Architecture and Urbanism at BRAC University. Morshed received his Ph.D. and Master’s in architecture from MIT, and BArch from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, where he also taught. He was a 2018 TEDxFoggyBottom speaker at George Washington University. He is the author of multiple books; among them, Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder (University Minnesota Press, 2015), Oculus: A Decade of Insights into Bangladeshi Affairs (University Press Limited, 2012), DAC, Dhaka in 25 Buildings (Altrim Publishers, Barcelona, 2017), and River Rhapsody: A Museum of Rivers and Canals (BRAC University, 2018).

Has Dhaka become a status city?

The status city often serves the privileged, while the huddling masses eke out a minimal existence

3m ago

Is human civilisation at an inflection point?

Our brains are being reprogrammed to look for the easiest solutions to our most vexing social and political questions.

5m ago

Is there an architecture for marginal communities?

Our experience of designing Brac regional offices across rural Bangladesh.

7m ago

How to reclaim flyovers as people-centric ‘green’ infrastructure

Characterised by a culture of ad hocism, these valuable urban lands below elevated road infrastructures rarely reach their full potential.

8m ago

Forging a Bengali identity through modernist architecture

After completing his Bachelor of Architecture degree at the University of Oregon, Eugene, in June 1952, the 29-year-old Muzharul Islam (1923-2012) returned home to find a postcolonial Pakistan embroiled in acrimonious politics of national identity.

9m ago

The Louis Kahn mystique: 20 years after ‘My Architect’

The legend of Louis Kahn remains strong.

10m ago

How we should design the next generation of parks

Do we need the 24/7 hustle and bustle of Dhaka – the cacophonous dramas of this sleepless city – reproduced in its parks too?

10m ago

Heatwaves, global warming, and the ethics of our cities

We must rethink how cities are planned, designed, and administered to combat the adverse effects of both the heat island problem and climate change.

11m ago
July 14, 2022
July 14, 2022

Bangladeshi architecture at the MoMA in New York: What it means for us

The exhibition can serve as a potent reminder for our ethical responsibility to preserve the mid-century buildings that tell our stories.

May 25, 2022
May 25, 2022

There is just one way to save Dhaka

The notoriety of Dhaka’s traffic is now daily news. Civil society members have been venting frustration about this maddening crisis.

February 4, 2022
February 4, 2022

Padma Bridge is a metaphorical countermovement

Recently, on a wintry afternoon, I went to see the Padma Bridge.

January 28, 2022
January 28, 2022

A time travel to Dhaka University’s 2034 convocation

It was Titian Matin’s first return to his native Bangladesh after he won the Nobel Prize in economics for his study of the reciprocal relationship between urban density and economic geography.

December 21, 2021
December 21, 2021

Understanding a freedom fighter’s prison letters

Imprisoned in various torture chambers by the Pakistan Army during Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971, Mohiuddin Ahmed, MP, wrote numerous letters to his wife, describing the systemic cruelties of his oppressors.

November 30, 2021
November 30, 2021

Is smart density the way forward for Bangladesh?

Going around in Dhaka could be overwhelming. The city seems overburdened with the impossible weight of people, buildings, vehicles, rickshaws, noise, carbon emission, and nonstop activities.

October 20, 2021
October 20, 2021

Tribute to a true admirer of Bangladesh

Mary Frances Dunham (MFD) arrived in Dhaka on a wintry day in November of 1960. From the window of her room at Hotel Shahbagh, she found ample opportunities to observe the city.

October 5, 2021
October 5, 2021

The delicate work of decolonising knowledge

In recent years, the idea of “decolonising knowledge” (DK)—that knowledge creation must be liberated from West-centric and racialised views of the world—has become a bottom-up intellectual movement in Western academia.

September 7, 2021
September 7, 2021

Could public consciousness of history be a measure of social progress?

For quite some time now, people have been discussing if there are more on-the-ground, inclusive ways to measure a country’s progress, rather than supra-quantitative metrics like GDP.

August 19, 2021
August 19, 2021

Chattogram desperately needs guardian angels

It is impossible these days to not notice Chattogram’s spectacular urban decline. Go around the port city and you will only experience a place plagued by anemia, chaos, a collective greed to commercialise every open space, and overall, a curious lack of aspiration.

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