The Pride of Bangladesh

For thousands of year, the most common building materials have been stone, brick and woods. They have been the most charming, ageing beautifully and suggesting a special nobility and strength. Modernist architecture begins in the early 20th century, traditional materials quickly gave way to three quintessential: Concrete, Steel and sheet-Grass. The result has far too many cases appeared brutal, uncaring and alienating. Could modern architecture not learn to work with traditional material while retaining the forms and the spirit of our own times?

This billion dollar question and beautifully answered by one of the greatest of all modernists, the American architect Louis Kahn. The Kahn was born in Russia in 1901 and emigrated with his parents to the United States at three. Kahn was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, but his career truly blossomed in the 1950s after a trip to Rome led him to a new appreciation of the beauty of Roman Architecture., the unique addition to modern time to include an ancient element in his work without losing his innovation and clarity of modernism.

I will draw an illustration thorough one of his great work for Bangladesh In the background of modernism. Construction began in 1961, while Bangladesh was still known as East Pakistan, it was planned to turn Dhaka into a second capital, complete with assembly facilities. The government enlisted the help of South Asian activist and architect Muzharul Islam, who suggested bringing in the world’s best architects. The government attempted to bring in Alvar Aalto and Le Corbusier, but both were unavailable. Islam then enlisted Kahn, a former Yale professor. 

During the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, construction was delayed, but it was finished on January 28, 1982. When Louis Kahn died, the project was about three-quarters completed, and it was continued by David Wisdom, who had previously worked for Louis Kahn. Kahn designed the entire Jatiyo Sangsad complex, which includes lawns, lake and residences for the Members of the Parliament. The entire masterpiece is designed in a way to form one or non–differentiable entity connecting the garden and mosque, surrounding the structure and forming a statement on the landscape. Kahn’s key design philosophy optimizes the use of space while representing Bangladeshi heritage and culture. External lines are deeply recessed by porticoes with huge openings of regular geometric shapes on their exterior, shaping the building’s overall visual impact. 

In the architect Louis Kahn’s own words:

“In the assembly, I have introduced a light-giving element to the interior of the plan. If you see a series of columns, you can say that the choice of columns is a choice in light. The columns are as solids frame the spaces of light. Now think of it, just in reverse and think that the columns are hollow and much bigger and that their walls can themselves give light, then the voids are rooms, and the column is the maker of light and can take on complex shapes and be the supporter of spaces and give light to spaces. I am working to develop the element so much that it becomes a poetic entity that has its beauty outside of its place in the composition. In this way, it becomes analogous to the solid column I mentioned above as a giver of light.”

Understanding the fact of designer’s mind, that has produced a building that, while universal in its sources of forms, aesthetics, and technologies, could be in no other place. These spaces alternate among eight “light and air courts” and a restaurant, as well as entrances to the garden and mosque. According to Robert McCarter, author of Louis I. Kahn, it “is one of the twentieth century’s greatest architectural monuments, and is without question Kahn’s magnum opus.”

Indeed, Bangladesh parliament house is a masterpiece for world and operated as an institution to practice democracy and law is something all nation proud of. The architect was not a political person but able to understand his responsibility to make a permanent mark and pay his deep attention. The people of Bangladesh love him and connected to him through this work. He feels and understands the pain of democracy that being felt inside and the oppression going on for over two decades. In the social aspects of his personal life, he was compared to an innocent child for his pure simplicity and he doesn’t know how to say no for budget or region.

Bangladesh is summer county, biggest delta of the world and rivers are compared as vein to body and greenery are everywhere. He feels and understands the pain of democracy that being felt inside of the country and the oppression going on over two decades. Kahn’s work successfully reflects the face of the country, the beauty, the green, the simplicity of people through geometric symbol and using natural light space water body everything holds Bangladesh in one stage. 

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