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A BIOGRAPHY OF Kazi Khaleed Ashraf
(Director-general of Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements)
A BIOGRAPHY OF KAZI KHAKEED ASHRAF
Kazi Khaleed Ashraf is an architect, urbanist, and architectural historian and critic who currently serves as the director-general of Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His work is on development of architecture, landscape, and city planning.
Kazi Khaleed Ashraf has authored books and essays on architecture in Bangladesh and India, the work of Louis Kahn, and the city of Dhaka. His writings on the architecture of Bangladesh provide a theoretical foundation for understanding both historical and contemporary forms of architecture. His written and design work on Dhaka advances that city as a model for understanding urbanism in a deltaic geography.
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Education
Kazi Khaleed Ashraf received his bachelor’s degree of architecture from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 1983. Later he received Masters from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and PhD from University of Pennsylvania.
Career
Kazi Khaleed Ashraf is the co-founder of the cartoon magazine Unmad. He and Ishtiaq Hossain jointly established Unmad in 1978 and he contributed as a cartoonist. His editorial drawings have appeared in The Nation, Philadelphia Inquirer, and The New York Times.
In the year 1997, Ashraf conducted a major exhibition on South Asian modernity (with James Belluardo) for the Architectural League of New York. The exhibition, “An Architecture of Independence: The Making of Modern South Asia” highlighted the works of Balkrishna Doshi, Achyut Kanvinde, Charles Correa and Muzharul Islam. Moreover, Ashraf edited a special volume of Architectural Design titled “Made in India“.
Ashraf’s currently working on water and the future of cities especially in such a dynamic hydrological milieu as Bangladesh. His theoretical position for reconsidering water in the new design intelligence has appeared in various writings and the founding of Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements in Dhaka, in 2015.
A big part of Ashraf’s writings is rethinking modernity and ancient linkages. His publication The Hermit’s Hut: Architecture and Asceticism in India (2013) traces roots of modern minimalism in the practices of asceticism and renunciation.
Ashraf also taught at University of Hawaii, the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University and Pratt Institute. Currently, Kazi Khaleed Ashraf is the director-general of Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements. In 2021, he was selected to be on the Master Jury of the 2020-2022 cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Writings
Kazi Khaleed Ashraf always contributes in writing on a wide variety of topics, and has published authoritative essays on architecture in South Asia, the works of Louis Kahn, and diverse theoretical topics. Along with books and journals, he has contributed to architectural encyclopedias. His contributions are seen towards the historical and theoretical narratives on architecture in Bangladesh. His written essays remain a major source on the philosophy and works of the master Bangladeshi architect Muzharul Islam. His scholarship on Louis Kahn has yielded important writings and major exhibitions, both in Bangladesh and the United States.
Ashraf edited a special volume of Architectural Design titled “Made in India”. A major part of Ashraf’s writings is rethinking modernity and ancient linkages. His publication The Hermit’s Hut: Architecture and Asceticism in India (2013) is always conventional.
Books And Publications
● GA (Global Architecture) monograph, Louis I. Kahn: National Capital Complex of Bangladesh, GA Edita Publications, Tokyo. Text by Kazi Ashraf, Photograph and Edited by Yukio Futagawa (1994).
● An Architecture of Independence: The Making of Modern South Asia, (with James Belluardo), on the work of Charles Correa, Balkrishna Doshi, Muzharul Islam and Achyut Kanvinde, introduction by Kenneth Frampton, published by the Architectural League of New York with Princeton Architectural Press (New York, 1997).
● Pundranagar to Sherebanglanagar: Architecture in Bangladesh, (with Saif Ul Haque and Raziul Ahsan), Chetana Publications (Dhaka, 1997).
● Sherebanglanagar: Louis Kahn and the Making of a Capital Complex (Loka Press, Dhaka, 2002)
● Guest Editor, Made in India, special issue on contemporary architecture in India, Architectural Design, John Wiley & Sons, London (December, 2007).
● Guest Editor, New Architecture, Jamini international art journal, special issue on architecture (December, 2007).
● Designing Dhaka: A Manifesto for a Better City (Loka Press, Dhaka, 2012).
● The Hermit’s Hut: Asceticism and Architecture in India (Spatial Habitus) (University of Hawaii Press, 2013).
● Louis Kahn: House of the Nation with Richard Saul Wurman and Grischa Ruschendorf (ORO Editions, 2014).
● Locations: Anthology of Architecture and Urbanism Volume 1 (ORO Editions and Bengal Foundation, 2016).
Essays And Articles
● Article, Muzharul Islam, Kahn and Architecture in Bangladesh, in MIMAR 31, 1988.
● Essay, Of Land, Water and Man in Bengal: Themes for a Deltaic Architecture, in Contemporary Architecture and City Form: The South Asian Paradigm, MARG Publications, Bombay, 1997.
● Essay (with James Belluardo), Building the Nation: The Architecture of Muzharul Islam and Achyut Kanvinde, in the India International Centre Quarterly, Monsoon Issue, 1997.
● Essay, Taking Place: Landscape in the Architecture of Louis Kahn, Journal of Architectural Education, November, 2007
● Article, This is Not a Building! Architectural Design, London, 2007.
● Essay, Masala City: Urban Stories from South Asia, Architectural Design, London, 2007.
● Review article, Louis Kahn and the Making of a Room, Journal of Architectural Education, October, 2009.
● Essay, The Buddha’s House, RES: Aesthetics and Anthropology, Vol. 53/54, Spring/Autumn, 2009.
● Essay, Muzharul Islam’s Modernity and the Idea of “Return Home”, in Muzharul Islam Architect, edited by Zainab Faruqui Ali and Fuad H Mullick, Brac University Press, 2011.
● Essay, Designing Dhaka: The History of a Future, contribution to an edited book on the history of Dhaka, 400 Years of Capital Dhaka, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 2011.
● Article, Brick Raft: An Architecture for the Flood Plain, in Architectural Review, November, 2012.
● Article (with Jyoti Puri), Hometown: The City in the Post-National Landscape, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), Vol. XLV, No. 41, October 9, 2010. Reprinted in The Mumbai Reader 10, 2012.
● Essay, Reading the Wind and Weather: The Meteorological Architecture of Bijoy Jain, in Architectural Design, November, 2012.
● Essay, Post-Mortem: Building Destruction, in Architecture Post-Mortem, edited by Donald Kunze, David Bertolini and Simone Brott, Ashgate Publishers, 2013.
● Essay, Doshi’s Sangath, in The Companions to the History of Architecture, Volume 4, edited by David Leatherbarrow and Alexander Eisenschmidt, John Wiley and Sons, Malden, 2013
● Essay, Water as Ground, in Design in the Terrain of Water, edited by Anuradha Mathur and Dilip de Cunha, ORO Editions, 2013.
● Article, An Architecture of Resistance, Special Monograph on the work of Kashef Chowdhury, Architectural Review, December, 2013.
● Essay, Tropical Bricolage: The Architectural Artistry of Rafiq Azam, in Rafiq Azam: Architecture for Green Living, Skira Publishers, Rome, and Bengal Foundation, Dhaka, 2013.
● Essay, Architecture of the Floodplain, in Topos: International Review of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, Vol. 86, 2014.
● Essay, Capital Complexity, in Louis Kahn: House of the Nation, by Grischa Ruschendorf, ORO Editions, 2015.
● Essay, Wet Narratives: Architecture must recognise that the future is fluid, in The Architectural Review, 2017.
● Essay, Tropical Trysts: Paul Rudolph and the Bengal Delta, in Reassessing Rudolph, edited by Timothy Rohan, Yale University Press, 2017.
Newspaper Articles
● Looking for America, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 1999.
● Architecture in the Spirit of Place, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 1999.
● Marco Polo in Dhaka, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 1999.
● Fifteen Points for Making Dhaka a City: A Manifesto, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 2003.
● Is Shopping the New Civic Realm? The Daily Star, Dhaka, 2004.
● Visions for Dhaka, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 2006.
● Kyoto is Like a Kimono, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 2006.
● The Miracles of Curitiba, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 2006.
● F.R. Khan: The Art of Standing Tall, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 2007.
● Dhaka: A View from New Orleans, Forum, Dhaka, 2007.
● Mass Transit. Now! The Daily Star, Dhaka, 2010.
● A New Dhaka is Possible, Forum, Dhaka, 2010.
● Missing the Metro, New Age, Dhaka, 2011.
● Architect Muzharul Islam: The Last Modernist, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 2012.
Practices
Kazi Khaleed Ashraf conducted critical planning and design visions for numerous towns in Bangladesh, including Narayanganj, Sylhet, and Mongla as an urban designer in charge of projects at Bengal Institute. His work on various aspects of Dhaka, including transport and public spaces, always provides new prospects for the transformation as one of the most complex metropolitan cities. Ashraf and his team proposed new regional arrangements on “metro hubs” and coastal development for Bangladesh as working on the large-scale, and integrating city-form, landscape, agriculture, and housing.
Awards
Ashraf edited a special volume of Architectural Design titled “Made in India” that received the Pierre Vago Journalism Award from the International Committee of Architectural Critics in 2008.
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