Kashef Chowdhury/URBANA: Critical Response

In this video, Kashef Chowdhury, co-founder and director of Bangladesh-based URBANA, presents five of the firm’s completed humanitarian projects. Including Plinth Raising, a design to raise settlements in the Jamuna Brahmaputra river network region, to protect them against seasonal flooding; Ukhia Schools, a prototype school in a Rohingya refugee camp constructed entirely of bamboo; and Kuakata Cyclone Shelter, an exposed concrete cyclone shelter for which part of the work was finding a client to fund the building, the projects Chowdhury shares display his commitment to solving complex climate and migration challenges in resourceful ways. The presentation puts forth what Chowdjury deems necessary to architectural practice today: an aesthetic of responsibility. 

The lecture is followed by a conversation with League president Paul Lewis, that touches on ideas of ruralism, how Chowdhury’s previous career in photography informs his work, and how architecture rather than taught must be inspired.

Current Work is a lecture series featuring leading figures in the worlds of architecture, urbanism, design, and art. The spring 2022 Current Work series focuses on architectural practices designing museums, schools, and cultural centers that contend with the complex legacies of place.

[roufunnahar]

When my mother shared about the night of 1991 & how she survived, I could believe this demon flying in the the sky. She said, when the water speedily getting higher, it made fire mixing with wind! And in the blink of eye, they were scattered in the water. The kids & grandma was gone forever. Maa found a dry grass's ball floating nearby & and she climbed on it, then to a branch of big tree. That's how she survived herself. Thanks to all the cyclone shelter now.