The future of the city, the city of the future
The city is perhaps the greatest innovation carried out by humans. Although nature has been used as an analogy in conceiving the fabric of the city, there is no such thing as the “city” in nature.
Muzharul Islam: A ‘vastukalabid’ for modern Bengal
Described as the doyen of Bangladesh’s architecture, Muzharul Islam introduced modernism in the country as well as the highest ideals of the craft.
The city is a beautiful thing when it’s for everyone
A city is a web of facilities and opportunities in which different agencies and communities lay stakes, push boundaries, and make bullish claims of making things better.
Crossing the Padma
Here was a river that was larger than life, larger than anything I had encountered before. Flowing gloriously and indifferently, the river presented a mythic scale against which I felt terribly puny.
The Detailed Area Plan for Dhaka is almost alright
One striking aspect of the DAP document is the geographical scope of Rajuk, in how it signals an expanded Dhaka.
Who is afraid of DAP?
The Detailed Area Plan (DAP) for 2022-2035, produced by Rajuk, is a radical and innovative document in the planning history of Dhaka.
March 1, 2021
120th birth anniversary of Architect Louis I. Kahn
February 20 was the 120th birth anniversary of the famed American architect Louis I. Kahn whose monumental architectural creation is the National Assembly (Sangsad Bhaban) of Bangladesh.
March 1, 2021
Louis Kahn's Capital Complexity
The National Capital Complex in Dhaka, designed by Louis Kahn, is an epic work in the annals of modern architecture. Even after sixty years of its conception, Kahn’s complex remains a wondrous phenomenon that is continuously renewing the purposes of architecture.
February 19, 2021
Future cities: A short guide to a Bengali urbanism
When al-Mansur laid the foundation of Baghdad in 762 on the banks of the Tigris, he imagined an ideal city in the shape of a round plan.
December 14, 2020
Imagining a Dhaka for 2035
No one doubts the magnitude of complexity that shrouds Dhaka, this city of 16 million poised between being the worst liveable and an economic colossus.
October 28, 2020
Naked cities
During a run for essentials, I ran into a graffiti on a wall at a Philadelphia exit ramp: “Civilisation is pandemic.” On any other day, I would not even think twice about such a street-smart philosophical pronouncement.
February 16, 2020
We Are the City
I dream of a city where turning the corner of an alley, in front of a shop of curios and old books, I decide what I want to do for the rest of my life.
April 3, 2019
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.
February 10, 2019
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
January 12, 2019
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.
January 1, 2019
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.”
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