A House in a Garden

“Independence brings in the greatest opportunity for a nation to express its thoughts, talent and energy … Now, we the architects can construct the right and distinct kind of architecture for an independent people.” – Muzharul Islam, Interview with Professor Shamsul Wares

Bangladesh is a country defined by an ancient surface hydrology. In a mohonas, or site, where salt and freshwater mix, urban pattern is drawn by the Ganges and Brahmaputra-Jamuna rivers flowing from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. No map of the country’s landform is accurate for very long – these braiding rivers swell and shift course in the snow and melt and monsoon from September to October. Bringing both destruction and restoration after an arid summer, their tidal waters deposit sand, silt and minerals, or ‘chars’, as they overflow the banks. During the dry season, the water recedes, revealing a new landform that will eventually transform.

Muzharul Islam (1923–2012) was born and raised in Bengal during the height of the Indian independence movement against British rule. As an architect, Islam is often remembered in association with his friend Stanley Tigerman, or his previous teachers, Paul Rudolph and Louis Kahn, to whom Islam had commissioned works in Bangladesh – the most notable being Kahn’s National Assembly Building. While the work of these seminal Western figures is mostly appreciated from a distance, reflections on local architects like Islam offer a new appreciation of South Asia’s contribution to global Modernism and its historical role in challenging remnant colonial frameworks.

Bangladesh has a rich history, weighed by extrication from successive colonial relationships. Following the end of the British Raj in 1947, the Indian subcontinent was partitioned, dividing Hinduism from Islam and India from Pakistan. The promise of Islamic nationalism gave way to the geographic impossibility of a united Pakistan, the political folly of partition stoking a grave period of unrest and armed conflict.

Rather than working in the colonial Indo-Saracenic style, a hybrid of colonial and Mughal aesthetics in art and architecture, Islam’s practice imagines progressive and cosmopolitan identity for Bangladesh. Searching for a new architectural language, his work questions the pan-Islamic rationale and departs from the influence of tradition, culture and religion in the formation of a new visual identity. His aesthetic of a post-colonial built environment – based on an open globality, connectivity and inclusive dialogue – captured the national desire for cultural and political emancipation. With modernist architecture, the Bengali people could start to imagine their independence.

The timely completion of Kahn’s National Assembly Building and Sher-e-Bangla Nagar complex in 1982 became ostensible symbols of the country’s new beginning. Behind these monumental concrete edifices, the harbinger of Bengali Modernism rests on a modest university building described as a bagan bari or ‘house in a garden’. Conceived as part of a masterplan within the Shahbagh district, the Institute of Fine Arts building became Islam’s first work, designed alongside the College of Architecture, the College of Performing Arts and the Public Library at the University of Dhaka.

Addressing the dichotomy of mid-century Dhaka, a developing city emerging from its rural environs, Islam proposed a vision for an alternative urbanity that could be seamlessly bonded to nature. Echoing the pre-modern garden city of ‘Dacca’ – the previous spelling of the capital prior to Bangladesh liberation – the Institute is at once a masterplan and landscape project. It is a quiet, cool world in which to study and pause, with apertures of verdant green stretching beyond the windows. The canopies of mango, bulbous jackfruits, coconut and date palm provide relief from harsh sun. Promoting opportunities for creative and social interaction, ancillary and garden spaces are elevated in their generous spatial gestures; the site of a walkway, terrace or stairway await a chance encounter or conversation. The raised piano nobile in LeCorbusier’s Villa Savoye was originally used to accommodate the automobile; similarly, Islam frees the ground plane and transforms it into an enchanting site of pedestrian arrival. After passing through the gate, the visitor encounters a forest of columns and an open court. Twisting like a branch, a stairway wraps around a tree, guiding the eye across garden views framed throughout the building.

By combining brick (the primary building material in Bangladesh) with reinforced concrete, the modernist idiom can respond to local conditions of craft. This subtle alteration of common building elements forms a sophisticated and tropical climatic response. While the geometry of each faculty is unique to its discipline, they are united by a lexicon of textures: brick, sophisticated jail-ceramic and lattices. Shielding students from heat and monsoon, open arcades and louvres funnel cooling wind within buildings. Air conditioning and large glazed windows are absent. Serving a dual role, these breezeways provide shaded passage between classes, drawing activity towards a deep pond overflowing with plant life.

Reminiscent of a pukur, or earthwork, used in the Bengali village – a storage device for water flow and feeding livestock – the pool supports the site’s robust urban ecology. Water is free to flow and soak the exposed soil, with heavy rain feeding the trees after an arid summer, before collecting in a deep basin. Filled with potted plants, sandals and easels left by students, its radial edge allows observation of seasonal water variations and the shifting landscape sustained.

Exiting from the boundary gate, visitors are once again swallowed by Dhaka, and the structure disappears behind a tall fence and foliage. The sounds of the city grow with the beeping of double-decker buses, cars, tuk-tuks and rickshaws. Alongside the river of automobiles, a row of flower vendors line one side of the street, their shopfronts draped in vermillion hues.

Dhaka was once imagined by Islam as a city with deltaic basins and monsoon seasons. Today, Islam’s vision for the ‘house in a garden’ holds little room in a city that has become one of the densest metropolises on earth. Like other urban centres, Dhaka struggles to break from free market pragmatism – street billboards now promise idealistic visions of glass towers and walled greenspace. Despite this, a new generation of local architects are continuing Islam’s legacy. Demonstrating the nuanced conditions of Bengali history, climate, materials and labour, the works of Marina Tabassum, Shatotto, URBANA and Rizvi Hassan are realised with a robust simplicity and care. Their work promises a built environment that can continue to reimagine Bangladesh’s historic and topographic continuum.

1. Duanfang, Lu. “Introduction”. Third World Modernism: Architecture, Development and Identity (London: Routledge, 2011), 3; The destruction of the Bengali Muslims remains one of the largest genocides and refugee crises in history. While the number of deaths has been politicised in recent years, estimates range from 200,000 (US Central Intelligence Estimation) to 3 million Bengali killed. Bass, Gary J. “Bargaining Away Justice: India, Pakistan, and the International Politics of Impunity for the Bangladesh Genocide.” International Security 41 no. 2 (2016): 140–187.
2. Shahbagh district – originally named Bagh-e-Badshahi – meaning ‘Garden for Kings’ or ‘Royal Garden’.