View from Dhaka: Dhaka's complex and troubled history has produced much fine and very varied architecture. Now, second-rate buildings and lack of planning threaten the city - View - Critical Essay

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 2002 by Saif Ul Haque

The crucial question that confronts DHAKA, the capital of Bangladesh, is whether it can exist as a decent and liveable city. To judge from its current architectural and planning scenario, it would be difficult to answer in the affirmative. Although a great deal of building activity is going on in this city, it hardly provides much reason to celebrate when the resulting environment is considered. Buildings of various types and heights are going up, while open spaces and water rapidly disappear, the roads remain clogged and the air becomes ever fouler. Dhaka perhaps is proving that sheer building activity is not enough to make a decent and liveable city.

Dhaka is a city with architecture that bears witness to more than 400 years of her history. Though the city came to prominence with the advent of the Mughals in Bengal, there are traces of her existence before the coming of the Mughals and a few architectural remains testify to that existence.

From 1610 to 1717 Dhaka remained the capital of the Mughal province of Bengal and during that period a number of important monuments were constructed, which included mosques, tombs, forts, caravanserais and bridges. In 1717 the capital shifted to Murshidabad, a move that initiated a period of steady decline of the city, which continued into the nineteenth century.

This coincided with the decline of Mughal rule and the ascent of the British in the province. The British had founded Calcutta and made it: their principal city, while Dhaka was reduced to the status of a mere district headquarters. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century however, under the initiative of the colonial administrators and the local elite, Dhaka experienced a programme of renewal and rejuvenation. It started to grow again; new areas were laid out with new buildings and the city grew in stature as an administrative, educational and commercial centre.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Dhaka became the capital of the newly formed province of East Bengal and Assam, ushering in a new beginning for the city. A flurry of building activity followed: administrative, educational, cultural and residential buildings from the period now constitute the bulk of Dhaka's colonial architecture. But its status as regional capital was short-lived: with the annulment of the Partition in 1911, it reverted back to a district town.

The Partition of India in 1947 brought yet another change for Dhaka when it became the capital of the eastern province of the newly formed state of Pakistan. The post-colonial period saw the coming of modernity in architecture and in 1955, Muzharul Islam, the doyen of Bangladeshi contemporary architecture, had the city's first two modern buildings constructed. The Public Library (now Dhaka University Library) and the Art College, both located on the Dhaka University campus, marked a distinct and definitive change in the architectural scene of Dhaka.

It is of course the Capital Complex by Louis Kahn that puts Dhaka prominently in the record of events of twentieth-century world architecture. Muzharul Islam was also instrumental in getting Kahn the commission for the Capital Complex. A shortage of architects in the country at the time necessitated the involvement of architects from abroad and a number of significant public buildings in Dhaka were designed by them.

In 1971, Dhaka emerged as the capital of an independent country -- Bangladesh. Since then, Dhaka has had phenomenal growth, and it continues to grow, but due to the absence of proper planning and urban design guidelines, the majority of recent buildings fail to create any serious architectural impact, nor do they improve the quality of life.

Nowadays the architectural and planning vision in Dhaka does not extend beyond the individual building lot. Within 50 years of having experienced a significant architectural beginning, Dhaka has been transformed into a place that can be easily described as an urban disaster. Most of this transformation has taken place in the last ten years or so -- more sparkling buildings, more flashy cars, a greater sense of hustle and bustle. The city has become everything except a city. It has become a gigantic, bustling, bursting urban agglomeration.

The death of Louis Kahn in 1974. and the sidelining of Muzharul Islam in a changed political scene after 1975 deprived Dhaka of finer thinking and meaningful approaches to architecture and urban planning. There are a few works by architects of later generations where attempts to fuse Western modernity with local traditions or the development of distinct styles are visible. The Martyrs' Memorial by Mainul Hossain, housing complexes by Bashirul Haq, S.O.S Youth Village and School by Raziul Ahsan and the Independence Monument by Urbana Architects are a few examples.

To overcome the crisis in architecture and urban planning that Dhaka is experiencing will require an effort of greater magnitude. Architects and planners working in this city certainly need to shoulder greater professional and social responsibility. By launching a sustained campaign based on a clearly delineated long-term idea, they can begin the process of reversing the continuous deterioration of the urban environment of Dhaka.