Note From The Director General

LAND, WATER AND SETTLEMENTS

“Dhaka is the toughest city in the world.”“Bangladesh is symptomatic of the gravest environmental challenges.” It is in the neighborhood of such pronouncements that we find necessary to rethink the scope of environmental design, and its pedagogy and practices.

With its aquatic-geological formation – in flux – and projected consequences of environmental changes, the organization of land, water and settlements takes on an urgency that is unique to Bangladesh. Settlements patterns, architectural types, and socio-economic life-world, that are dynamically inter-connected, confront new conditions raised by accelerated economic, environmental and social transformations.

In such anxious times, the architectural agenda needs to go beyond problem solving and form creation. At the Bengal Institute, we think that the architectural task should extend its sights to the intellectual, ethical and creative issues facing the futures of human

habitats. In this regard, a new “architectural intelligence” is needed that is more about “place-form” rather than spectacular objects. The question of systemic and integrated “landscapes,” whether as habitats or place-forms, agricultural fabrics, or natural wetlands, should be at the core of this new approach. Developing this design intelligence requires a new kind of knowledge base, training and orientation that will uncover the original intimacy between architecture, habitation and landscape.

Bengal Institute promises unique learning programs by bringing outstanding thinkers and practitioners to a common stage in Dhaka. Programs will offer opportunities to both fresh and established professionals, and young faculty, in developing their interests and imaginations, as well as their obligations to the new environmental task.