Kazi Khaleed Ashraf | The Daily Star

  • Kazi Khaleed Ashraf

    Kazi Khaleed Ashraf is an architect and urbanist, and director-general of Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements.

  • Banani fire

    A Fire Next Door

    Before the amber of the last one turn to ashes and forgotten memories, a new flame leaps up in another neighbourhood of the city, revealing, once again, cracks in the façade of our tilottoma.
  • Urbanism for Dhaka

    An Urbanism for Dhaka

    A city is not mere buildings, streets and spaces; it is a theatre of social actions. And it is in that theatre, according to the American urbanist Lewis Mumford, that “man's more purposive activities…work out, through conflicting cooperative

  • Yes, thinking about mud

    Mud is the bane of the Bengali middle-class. Yet, mud is all over the place. Mud—that gooey, gluey, brown muck—lies waiting in the dry dust and with a little sprinkling of water rises up in rebellion, and grabs the pumps, heels and sandals of the middle-class and makes them skid off balance.

  • The city is a letter that arrives late

    I have known for a long time that one does not go anywhere. It is the cities of the countries that come or do not come to you. Cities are fateful letters. They only arrive lost. They only arrive posthumously.”

  • Reimagining the west bank of Dhaka

    Despite the usual gloomy narratives, there are opportunities to transform Dhaka into a modern but ecologically attuned metropolis. The transformation can be carried out with our own resources, and our own imagination.
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