This is Spotlight.
Our Spotlight content features architects who are conscious of their cultural challenges and who have defined their practice by reinventing their roots. This series aims to broaden the palette of influential architects and highlight placemaking in countries that are in the process of architectural decolonisation.
Saif Ul Haque is an architect and educator. He received his architectural education at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Besides practice, he is involved in teaching and research.
The Project is a three-classroom preschool located in South Kanarchor. The riverine site is often flooded for five months every year. Therefore, the architects created an amphibious structure that could sit on the ground or float on the water. Chosen for its lightness and durability, Bamboo was purchased in neighbouring villages and drifted along the river to the site. The project is exemplary of how to build an affordable and viable structure with locally available materials. The project was the recepient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in the 2017-2018 cycle.
Marina Tabassum is a Bangladeshi architect and principal of Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA). Her work is exemplary of utilising local materials and craftsmanship to elevate the quality of space and architecture. Her design of the Bait-ur-Rouf Mosque received an Aga Khan award in 2016.
Bait-ur-Rouf Mosque was built over the course of 12 years with a small budget on charitable donations and completed in 2012. It also serves as a school, a meeting place and a playground for the underserved neighbourhood in Dhaka. The prayer hall is proportioned to allow for contemplation and evenlu lit to enhance the feeling of all as equal.
Yasmeen Lari is Pakistan’s first female architect, and the winner of the 2020 Jane Drew Prize.
Lari has said, "The two ends of the spectrum of the two worlds we live and work in are best captured in the words of two famous architects, Mies van der Rohe and Hassan Fathy. Mies van der Rohe, a master of putting the elements of a building together and the grand master of detail, has said: "I am first interested in a good building. Then I place it in the best possible spot.' In contrast Hassan Fathy, who has spoken more forcefully than any other on the beatify of the vernacular and the importance of tradition, states: 'You must start from the beginning, letting your new buildings grow from the daily lives of the people who will live in them, shaping the houses to the measure of people's songs, weaving the pattern of a village as if on the village looms, mindful of the trees and the crafts that grow there, respectful of the skylines and humble before the seasons.
Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury was born in Dhaka, the son of a civil engineer. Chowdhury grew up in Bangladesh and the Middle East before graduating in architecture from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 1995.
Completed in 2011, the Friendship Centre is a rural training center inspired by one of the country’s oldest urban archaeological sites. Consists of offices, a library, meeting rooms, and prayer and tea rooms, the pavilion-like buildings are surrounded by courts and pools. As the centre is located in an agricultural area susceptible to flooding and earthquakes, an embankment has been constructed with a water run-off pumping facility. Built and finished primarily of one material – local hand-made bricks – the spaces stay true to Bangladesh’s climate and identity.
The Goa Institute of Management by Brinda Somaya. Somaya is an Indian architect and urban conservationist. She received a Masters of Arts degree from Smith College, USA after graduating from the Sir J.J. College of Architecture in Mumbai in 1971.
Fun fact: Her firm’s first office was in her back garden!
Kazuyo Sejima is a Japanese architect, and half of SANAA, a Tokyo based architecture firm. Having completed works internationally, such as: the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, the New Museum in New York, and Grace Farms in Connecticut, Sejima is one of Japan's leading architects making a change in the industry.
Photos © Dean Kaufman © Iwan Baan
Tatiana Bilbao is a Mexican architect. At the core of her studio's practice is an analysis of the context surrounding projects, which scale from masterplans to affordable housing typologies. A goal of the work is to both contribute to its surroundings while remaining flexible to absorb shifting needs.
Zhang Ke the first Chinese architect to have won an Alvar Aalto award in its 50 year span. The micro yuan’er is an attempt to save the rich heritage of Beijing Hutongs.
The courtyard is about 300-400 years old and once housed a temple that was then turned into residences in the 1950s. Over the past fifty or sixty years, each family built a small add-on kitchen in the courtyard. Almost all of them have been wiped out with the renovation practices of the past years. In redesigning, renovating and reusing the informal add-on structures instead of eliminating them, it was intended to recognise them as an important historical layer and as a critical embodiment of Beijing’s contemporary civil life in Hutongs that has so often been neglected.
In concert with the families, a nine-metre-square children's library built of plywood was inserted underneath the pitched roof of an existing building.
Text adapted from Aga Khan awards and architect website.
In 2013, a Nigerian architect, Kunlé Adeyemi of NLÉ proposed to transform the water slum status of the Makoko waterfront community to a floating island by creating a sustainable building prototype. The structure utilises local materials such as bamboo, timber and barrels to produce architecture that applies to the physical, social needs of people and reflects the culture of the community.
Known as the 'architect of the poor', Fathy’s name rarely appears in histories. His work poses an opposition to foreign cultural domination and the use of western architectural models in the Arab region; a trend which was particularly vogue in Egypt at the beginning of the 20th century.
The village was designed and built between 1946 and 1952, located in Luxor on the West Bank of the Nile River. It is an outstanding example of sustainable human settlement and appropriate use of technology in architecture and planning using local materials and techniques.
Text adapted from World Heritage Convention and Architecture Review.
Amateur Architecture Studio is founded by Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu in 1997. Completed in 2008, the Ning Bo History Museum is a 30,000 square- meter building located in the city of Ningbo in Zhejiang province, China. The studio name references the approach an amateur builder takes - one based on spontaneity, craft skills and cultural traditions.
The Ning Bo museum was completed in 2008; and applauded for its experimental building process and its reuse of locally recovered and recycled materials including bamboo, tiles and bricks. This unique combination of traditional understanding, experimental building tactics and intensive research defines the basis for the couple and their works.
Minnette De Silva was Sri Lanka’s first modern architect and the first Asian woman to be made an associate of the RIBA. Having studied at the Architectural Association, de Silva imported new architectural language while building in her home country and modernised traditional characters of Sri Lankan architecture.
Senanyake Flats were designed and built in the late 1940s and early 1960s. Its whitewashed modern exterior is softened by shrubs and trees de Silva have strategically planted, offering shade in the tropical climate of Sri Lanka. Other notable works include: Karunaratne House and several blocks of public housing in Kandy.
Lina Bo Bardi was an Italian born Brazilian architect who have undoubtedly challenged the modernist architectural scene in Brazil in the 20th century; especially as a female architect building in the male dominated field at the time.
The SESC centre in Pompéia is a centre for the public, housed within a disused oil barrel factory. Bo Bardi cherished what was existing and strove to serve the neighborhood. Inside the factory, partition walls were torn down to free up generous spaces for the public, holding activities ranging from ballet to chess, fostering and educating the locals. ‘In her eyes, heritage was not limited to Classical Italian churches or centuries-old Palladian buildings; she identified the factory as something worth preserving for its functional beauty.’
Beirut-born and Paris-based Lina Ghotmeh initially wanted to become an archaeologist, as she is fascinated with the history and narratives in things. If we had to choose one word to describe her personality and vision, it would have to be: Humanist.
The 13-storey tall building is a residential tower, with irregular openings and deep-set balconies to allow for views out and lush plants to grow on. The thick skin of the building is an earth and cement mixture; skillfully chiseled by hand, and allows many workers to make their mark through craft. Stone Garden is an exceptional and graceful survivor of the Beirut explosion, despite being just one mile from the epicentre of the blast.
Simón Vélez was born in 1919, in Manizales, Colombia, where bamboo is endemic and abundant. Almost 35 years ago, Vélez discovered a very simple construction technique that revolutionised the way we build with bamboo: by injecting cement mortar in the empty chambers of bamboo where there are structural unions, whereby allowing bamboo to be utilised for the first time as ‘vegetal steel’
He believes that there is an overdoes minerals (concrete, steel and glass) in the construction industry nowadays.Velez has designed and constructed over 200 buildings in Germany, France, the USA, Brazil, Mexico, China and Jamaica.
Anupama Kundoo is an Indian architect, born in 1967 in Pune, India. Kundoo grew up in Mumbai, and moved to pursue her career in south India. Through her projects and research, Kundoo desires to utilise everyday materials to build through a symbiosis of old and new techniques that is appropriate to the socio-economic context.
The homes are designed to accommodate 15 children and 5 foster parents. It was built using a rare technology, which consists of baking a mud house insitu. This technology involves almost only labour, with very little spent of ‘purchased’ materials. The design incorporates innovative uses of urban waste; such as turning bicycles wheel frames into formwork for windows and later as window grills.
Francis Kéré is an internationally renowned Burkinabè architect, recognised for his pioneering approach to design and sustainable modes of construction. Located in the third most populated city in Burkina Faso, the Lycée Schorge Secondary School sets a new standard for educational excellence in the region, while providing an inspiring showcase of local building materials applied to an iconic and innovative design.
The school consists of nine modules arranged radially around a courtyard, protecting the central space from wind and dust. A series of steps creates a loosely defined amphitheatre, which accommodates informal gatherings as well as assemblies and celebrations for the school and wider community. The classrooms’ ceilings, made of perforated plaster vaults, diffuse indirect sunlight in order to improve the light quality while avoiding the heat otherwise caused by direct radiation.
Balkrishna Doshi was born in Pune, India, in 1927. With over 90 years of experience, Doshi often advocates ‘Architecture for the People’ and has realised more than 1000 design projects. His life’s work was honoured with a Pritzker Prize in 2018.
Doshi’s own studio, Sangath, features a series of sunken vaults sheathed in china mosaic as well as a small grassy terraced amphitheatre. The overall form exaggerates the deatils of nature with its rolling mounds, cave-like spaces, terraced land, playful water channels, and reflective surfaces. Along with connections to nature, Sangath holds connections to India’s culture. The layout resembles the way that a temple develops a series of stages into a final platform while the form loosely imitates the boldness of a stupa.
The late Palestinian-Jordanian architect Jafar Tukan was born in Jerusalem in 1938, and went to school at al-Najah National College in Nablus before joining the American University in Beirut (AUB) in 1955, graduating in 1960.
His work extended to include nearly all aspects of architecture and planning. His notable projects include the Ayshah Bakkar Mosque in Beirut (1971), the Amman City Hall, and the SOS Children’s Village in Aqaba, Jordan (1991); for which he received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2001. The centre is an orphanage designed as a cluster of two-storey buildings containing nine family homes, a kindergarten, an administration building, staff housing, a sports hall, and a service block. The structures are arranged to form shaded courtyards accessible through vaulted archways. The buildings are constructed of reinforced concrete frames and infill of granite stones.