AIA Canada Society - South Asian Modern and the Making of a Nation: Louis I. Kahn’s National Assembly Complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh
When: Wednesday 9 April 2025 @ 12:00 (Eastern US Time)
Where: ONLINE
CES: 1.0 LU for AIA Members
Speaker
Dr. Nubras Samayeen
Description
Of the Western design professionals who played a key role in establishing modernity in South Asia, Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974), the American Modernist, is one of the most important ones. From the mid to late 20th century, Kahn designed two key institutions in the region. One is the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (1962-1972), India, and the other is the National Assembly Complex (constructed 1963-1982) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Taking Kahn’s Assembly Complex in Dhaka as the focus, this lecture will present distinctive instrumentality of architecture and landscape vis-a-vis holistic built environment, in the formation of a nation’s identity in the post-colonial (after 1947) and post-independence (after 1971) eras. His work not only demonstrates a merging of Western modernist architecture with Eastern cultural elements, but it also serves as a symbolic representation of a newly independent nation striving to define itself both internally and on the world stage. While designing the Complex, Kahn was inspired by the region’s deltaic landscape and its longstanding influences on the culture. The Complex itself appears to float on a constructed, artificial lake and the other key buildings abut the lake, thereby granting the entire site a sense of dynamic interplay with the lake and surrounding landscape. Accompanying the focus on water, there are other elements of the design that Kahn intended as nationally symbolic: the immense lawn, the basic geometric shapes, the gardens, and the open plazas. These spaces, while vast and monumental, are also meant to be accessible to the public, encouraging inclusivity and fostering democratic engagement. Though many of the inspirations of the architectural design expressions came from the Western culture, the Assembly Complex was intended as a historical and cultural emblem that would help in the formation of democracy for the newly found, independent nation, East Pakistan ( later Bangladesh). Kahn therefore envisioned an amalgam of sensibilities: modernist yet traditional, Western yet Bengali (Bangladesh’s culture), open yet monumental, forward-looking yet reverential. The final result was a magnum opus; it reflects Kahn’s vision for a national space that was open and egalitarian, yet at the same time, imbued with symbolic weight. Such complexity permeates not only the design but the entire post-colonial history of the country and South Asia region.
