Adnan Zillur Morshed

THE GRUDGING URBANIST

Adnan Zillur Morshed, PhD, is an architect, architectural historian, urbanist, and public intellectual. He is a professor of architecture and architectural history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and executive director of the Centre for Inclusive Architecture and Urbanism at BRAC University. Morshed received his Ph.D. and Master’s in architecture from MIT, and BArch from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, where he also taught. He was a 2018 TEDxFoggyBottom speaker at George Washington University. He is the author of multiple books; among them, Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder (University Minnesota Press, 2015), Oculus: A Decade of Insights into Bangladeshi Affairs (University Press Limited, 2012), DAC, Dhaka in 25 Buildings (Altrim Publishers, Barcelona, 2017), and River Rhapsody: A Museum of Rivers and Canals (BRAC University, 2018).

Bangladesh’s eunomia problem

In the ancient Greek society, eunomia outlined how things should be in an ideal society.

6m ago

Shamsul Wares: A teacher who inspired generations of architects

Aristotle once said, “Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.” Shamsul Wares understood, and hence taught.

1y ago

A post-Partition heritage campus worth preserving

FCC should not be viewed simply as one of the cadet colleges; it is a heritage campus that can be showcased to the world.

1y ago

Planning for Dhaka's new night

Dhaka should be readied for a nighttime culture that offers a potpourri of entertainment options to people.

1y ago

Has Dhaka become a status city?

The status city often serves the privileged, while the huddling masses eke out a minimal existence

1y ago

Is human civilisation at an inflection point?

Our brains are being reprogrammed to look for the easiest solutions to our most vexing social and political questions.

1y ago

Is there an architecture for marginal communities?

Our experience of designing Brac regional offices across rural Bangladesh.

1y ago

How to reclaim flyovers as people-centric ‘green’ infrastructure

Characterised by a culture of ad hocism, these valuable urban lands below elevated road infrastructures rarely reach their full potential.

1y ago
March 20, 2020
March 20, 2020

Bangabandhu and the Bengal Delta

It is fascinating that Bangabandhu began his Unfinished Memoirs (published in 2012) with an existential characterisation of his birthplace in geographic relationship to a river: the Madhumati river, which divides or connects the two southern districts of Faridpur and Khulna.

March 10, 2020
March 10, 2020

Who is really responsible for the coronavirus pandemic?

As the novel coronavirus known as Covid-19 spreads rapidly across the world, we now face another dimension of the “globalisation and its discontents” argument.

February 14, 2020
February 14, 2020

Changing the shy world of adolescent girls

Back in 2017, we had an opportunity to build a small and experimental toilet in Jhalokati, with the simple intention of helping adolescent girls in a rural school who had no real toilet to avail.

January 26, 2020
January 26, 2020

Why BRAC should transform its experience into knowledge

I first met Sir Fazle Hasan Abed in 2012 at an invitation-only meeting in Washington, DC.

January 2, 2020
January 2, 2020

What makes a city inspiring?

As part of a class assignment last semester a group of architecture students asked me a question: what makes a city inspiring?

December 6, 2019
December 6, 2019

A tribute to Rabiul Husain: Our beloved poet-architect

If you are passing by Farmgate, you are most likely to notice a boxy brick building at the intersection of Airport Road and Khamar Bari Road.

November 6, 2019
November 6, 2019

Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn visit Dhaka

At a public place in the afterlife, Louis Kahn ran into Le Corbusier. The Franco-Swiss architect was pleased to see the esoteric architect/guru from Philadelphia.

October 30, 2019
October 30, 2019

The democracy of public squares

I have long wondered why cities in Bangladesh don’t have vibrant, dedicated public places or squares, in the sense of Taksim Square in Istanbul, Trafalgar Square in London,

September 30, 2019
September 30, 2019

Why not a national footpath policy?

Population density in cities like Dhaka and Chattogram is daunting.

September 3, 2019
September 3, 2019

Will the metro rail solve Dhaka’s traffic apocalypse?

Hope is high that when Metro Rail Transit (MRT) finally arrives in Dhaka, the capital city’s legendary traffic congestion will ease off.