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Kazi Khaleed Ashraf

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf is an architect and urbanist, and director-general of Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements.

Khalid.jpg

No river, no dream

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf (KKA): River-realm or river-sphere, or, in a technical sense, river ecology, has been a recurring topic in our many conversations.
15 January 2026, 00:00 AM
15 January 2026, 00:00 AM
chilekothar-sepai-1.jpg

In Focus / In a city called Elias

In a city called Elias, there is no beginning and there is no end—“it lives imperishably.” The past and the dead are as vital as the rank waters of the Buriganga.
4 January 2026, 18:00 PM
4 January 2026, 18:00 PM
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A Social Vision for Dhaka’s Housing

The promise of shelter is broken in plain sight
20 June 2025, 18:00 PM
20 June 2025, 18:00 PM
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Writing the Padma

The first experience of the great river Padma is nothing less than overwhelming, and slightly terrifying. I first came to face the mighty river as a young lad in my teens sometime in April of the momentous year of 1971. My first sighting came with two terrors. My father was fleeing Dhaka with the family with the hope of crossing the river to escape the brutal onslaught of the Pakistan army. Arriving at the banks, there was the Padda (Padma) before us with its glorious panorama. It seemed like an oceanic river, with no sight of the other side, and the frightening prospect of crossing it.
1 June 2025, 18:00 PM
1 June 2025, 18:00 PM
Ecological thinking in Prof Razzaq’s ‘State of the Nation’

Ecological thinking in Prof Razzaq’s ‘State of the Nation’

Since the 1960s, Prof Abdur Razzaq wielded considerable influence on the academic and literati circle of his time,.
23 February 2025, 02:10 AM
23 February 2025, 02:10 AM
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Dhaka is an island

Claiming that Dhaka is an island is an earnest call for an ecological and nature-oriented restoration of the city, and to experience.
22 December 2024, 07:00 AM
22 December 2024, 07:00 AM
biggest wetland in Dhaka

The biggest wetland in Dhaka nobody knows about

Before the construction of the beribadh in the early 1990s, the nameless water body was part of the overflow zone of the Turag River.
22 September 2024, 01:30 AM
22 September 2024, 01:30 AM
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Dhaka, an inequal city

It is no wonder that a vast population of Dhaka are generally disgruntled with where they are.
2 September 2024, 04:00 AM
2 September 2024, 04:00 AM
Death of an architecture

Death of an architecture

Mir Mosharraf Hossain Hall should be retained and restored.
30 March 2024, 04:00 AM
future of the city

The future of the city, the city of the future

The city is perhaps the greatest innovation carried out by humans. Although nature has been used as an analogy in conceiving the fabric of the city, there is no such thing as the “city” in nature.
19 February 2024, 18:00 PM
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Muzharul Islam: A ‘vastukalabid’ for modern Bengal

Described as the doyen of Bangladesh’s architecture, Muzharul Islam introduced modernism in the country as well as the highest ideals of the craft.
25 December 2023, 11:30 AM
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A Dhaka we’ll want to arrive at

The city, the one that we want to arrive at, remains illusory
31 October 2023, 03:00 AM
Better urban spaces

The city is a beautiful thing when it’s for everyone

A city is a web of facilities and opportunities in which different agencies and communities lay stakes, push boundaries, and make bullish claims of making things better.
23 June 2023, 15:00 PM
Padma Bridge by Mohammad Tasawar Islam

Crossing the Padma

Here was a river that was larger than life, larger than anything I had encountered before. Flowing gloriously and indifferently, the river presented a mythic scale against which I felt terribly puny.
23 December 2022, 18:00 PM
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The Detailed Area Plan for Dhaka is almost alright

One striking aspect of the DAP document is the geographical scope of Rajuk, in how it signals an expanded Dhaka.
24 November 2022, 17:00 PM
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Who is afraid of DAP?

The Detailed Area Plan (DAP) for 2022-2035, produced by Rajuk, is a radical and innovative document in the planning history of Dhaka.
6 October 2022, 14:00 PM
kazi_khalid_ashraf.jpg

Metrophilia: How to Love Dhaka

If you want to fall in love with the city—walk. This simple aphorism opens up a full discourse on how we can make our cities liveable and civic, and how we might live together as a collective.
9 July 2022, 12:00 PM
aquatic-areas-dhaka.jpg

Dhaka needs new urban-forms

If the city is the new challenge of the time, the “edge” of the city is at the heart of it.
30 October 2021, 18:00 PM
louis-i-kahn1.jpg

120th birth anniversary of Architect Louis I. Kahn

February 20 was the 120th birth anniversary of the famed American architect Louis I. Kahn whose monumental architectural creation is the National Assembly (Sangsad Bhaban) of Bangladesh.
28 February 2021, 18:00 PM
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Louis Kahn's Capital Complexity

The National Capital Complex in Dhaka, designed by Louis Kahn, is an epic work in the annals of modern architecture. Even after sixty years of its conception, Kahn’s complex remains a wondrous phenomenon that is continuously renewing the purposes of architecture.
28 February 2021, 18:00 PM
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Future cities: A short guide to a Bengali urbanism

When al-Mansur laid the foundation of Baghdad in 762 on the banks of the Tigris, he imagined an ideal city in the shape of a round plan.
18 February 2021, 18:00 PM
Imagining-a-Dhaka-3.jpg

Imagining a Dhaka for 2035

No one doubts the magnitude of complexity that shrouds Dhaka, this city of 16 million poised between being the worst liveable and an economic colossus.
13 December 2020, 18:00 PM
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Naked cities

During a run for essentials, I ran into a graffiti on a wall at a Philadelphia exit ramp: “Civilisation is pandemic.” On any other day, I would not even think twice about such a street-smart philosophical pronouncement.
27 October 2020, 18:00 PM
City1.jpg

We Are the City

I dream of a city where turning the corner of an alley, in front of a shop of curios and old books, I decide what I want to do for the rest of my life.
15 February 2020, 18:00 PM
Banain Fire incident

A Fire Next Door

Before the amber of the last one turn to ashes and forgotten memories, a new flame leaps up in another neighbourhood of the city, revealing, once again, cracks in the façade of our tilottoma.
2 April 2019, 18:00 PM
Urbanism for Dhaka

An Urbanism for Dhaka

A city is not mere buildings, streets and spaces; it is a theatre of social actions. And it is in that theatre, according to the American urbanist Lewis Mumford, that “man's more purposive activities…work out, through conflicting cooperative
9 February 2019, 18:00 PM
Yes, thinking about mud

Yes, thinking about mud

Mud is the bane of the Bengali middle-class. Yet, mud is all over the place. Mud—that gooey, gluey, brown muck—lies waiting in the dry dust and with a little sprinkling of water rises up in rebellion, and grabs the pumps, heels and sandals of the middle-class and makes them skid off balance.
11 January 2019, 18:00 PM
The city is a letter that arrives late

The city is a letter that arrives late

I have known for a long time that one does not go anywhere. It is the cities of the countries that come or do not come to you. Cities are fateful letters. They only arrive lost. They only arrive posthumously.”
31 December 2018, 18:00 PM

Pagination

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