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).

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.

6m 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.

7m ago

Planning for Dhaka's new night

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

7m ago

Has Dhaka become a status city?

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

11m 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

Forging a Bengali identity through modernist architecture

After completing his Bachelor of Architecture degree at the University of Oregon, Eugene, in June 1952, the 29-year-old Muzharul Islam (1923-2012) returned home to find a postcolonial Pakistan embroiled in acrimonious politics of national identity.

1y ago
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.

July 16, 2019
July 16, 2019

Bolai, Avatar, and our environment

The other day I was going from Chattogram to my ancestral village in the Chandanish upazila, located about 40km southeast from the city centre. As soon as I crossed the Karnafuli River a common scene along the road began to haunt me. Felled trees were stacked up on both sides of the road, to be processed locally or transported to lumber mills on the outskirts of cities. The continuity of the spectacle revealed the enormity of scale in tree cutting. It felt as if a full-scale war on nature—a kind of “ecocide”—was going on.

June 25, 2019
June 25, 2019

The calculus of heritage preservation

The clandestine demolition of Jahaj Bari in Old Dhaka on the night of Eid-ul-Fitr reveals the precarious state of historic preservation in Bangladesh.

May 28, 2019
May 28, 2019

Debunking the smart-city myth

I have been following the “smart city” conversation in Bangladesh for quite some time now. Last year I sat on a panel to discuss the topic during what was called the “smart-city week” in Dhaka. As Bangladesh urbanises rapidly, as mid-sized cities increasingly become its new urban frontier, the mayors of small towns across the country seem drawn to the idea of smart city. They frequently talk about how they are eager to transform their towns into smart cities. I myself spoke with a few mayors who sounded anxious to bring “smartness” to their towns.