Dhaka's history told through its landmark buildings

The story of Bangladesh's capital city Dhaka is told in a new book through its iconic buildings that played transformative roles in its architectural formation.

"DAC Dhaka" focuses on 25 buildings in Dhaka, representing different architectural phases since the Mughal era, beginning in the early 17th century.

The earliest surviving structure in Dhaka is a small pre-Mughal mosque in Old Dhaka.

According to the authors Adnan Morshed and Nesfun Nahar, both architects, the list is neither exhaustive nor necessarily representative of the "best" in town.

The featured buildings communicate larger ideas about Dhaka's building tradition, represent an architectural trend, influence the architectural scene, and offer a spatial story in the evolution of this city.

 

The book, published by Bloomsbury, acts as a traveller's guide and combines nuanced architectural and urban histories of these buildings, along with maps, drawings, and pictures. It also includes practical information such as Dhaka's climate, languages, travel, hotel, and restaurant options, currency, and markets and shops, among other details.

Morshed describes Dhaka as a quintessential 21st-century urban narrative of whirlwind modernity.

Like any other emerging megacities of the world, Dhaka has been growing exponentially, particularly since it became the capital of the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971, he says.

"Today, a visitor's first impression of this city could be bewildering. Streets swarm with pedestrians, rickshaws, motorbikes, cars, taxis, buses and trucks. Enormous shopping arcades all across the city attract streams of consumers. Meanwhile, the Parliament building area, Ramna Park, and Hatir Jheel provide much-needed respite from the congestion and noise," the book says.

"Multi-story apartments dominate the city's built environment, signalling the rise of an urban bourgeoisie. The impoverished but highly resilient slum city of Karail, in the shadow of the high-end Gulshan residential area, debunks the myth that urban poverty is seen only in the city's peripheral wasteland," it says.

The buildings range from the Lalbagh Fort built 500 years ago to those barely 10 years old. Sixteen of the 25 buildings are from the post independence period.

The title of the book is the airport code for the city, derived from Dhaka's old name Dacca.

Among the other buildings featured in the book are the Independence Monument; the Kamalapur Railway Station, designed by Daniel C Dunham and Robert G Boughey; the Faculty of Fine Arts building, designed by Muzharul Islam; and the Bait ur Rouf mosque.

The best example of Mughal building art in Dhaka is the incomplete palace complex of Lalbagh Fort. Undertaken 25 years after the Taj Mahal was built, Lalbagh Fort was constructed on approximately 18 acres of land in the southwestern part of Old Dhaka.

Morshed says two key factors contributed to Dhaka's growth during the Mughal era. First, the city's superior geo-strategic location enabled both the surveillance of lower Bengal, which had been ravaged by the Maghs and Portuguese pirates, and the suppression of rebel chiefs.

And second, Dhaka's geography also provided an administrative advantage in collecting imperial revenues and protecting revenue interests.