Abstract
Jatio Sangsad Bhaban [JSB], more commonly known as the National Assembly Building, or Capital Complex of Bangladesh, was designed by the renowned architect Louis I. Kahn and is an iconic landmark in the urban landscape of Dhaka (Capital of Bangladesh). It was commissioned in 1962, and a site was selected on the northern outskirt of the then Dacca (Dhaka). From the inception of the city, the rapid growth occurred mostly in a spontaneous way, which later occurred surrounding the JSB. JSB has become a central physical focus in Dhaka because of organic growth of Dhaka. JSB, the national assembly building of Bangladesh, can be viewed as a product of Bangladeshi nationalism, a socio-political construct that expresses both the national identity and the democratic spirit of the Bengali people after the country’s tumultuous history of subjugation, occupation. This paper proposes that there exists an imagined, symbolic and metaphorical connection between the spatial construction of JSB as an urban focal point, and its socio-political construction. This imagined nexus is explored in this paper in line with the theoretical framework of Lefebvre’s (1991) groundbreaking treatise on the ‘production of space’. The imagined and real socio-political construction of space is also endorsed by a range of discourses from urban anthropology, urban geography, human and cultural geography.
Highlights
JSB, or National Assembly Building, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is an epic building designed by renowned American architect Louis I Kahn
It bears testimony to Bangladesh's history, having witnessed the political struggle of East Pakistan against West Pakistan that culminated in the war of independence in 1971
We argue on the other hand that such physical domination of democratic space has historical antecedents in places of democratic assembly ranging from the agoras of ancient Greek cities to present day Boston City Hall Plaza and Pershing Park in Washington; the growth of Dhaka around JSB occurred spontaneously and organically, making it an urban focal point which is significant as its role as democratic emblem
Summary
JSB, or National Assembly Building, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is an epic building designed by renowned American architect Louis I Kahn. Castell (1978) and Geddins (1979) visualise urban built forms as repositories of socio-political history and cultural meanings of people Bounds argue in this regard, ‘The city is part of the wider society, with socio-political processes amenable to urban analysis. This paper will attempt to explore the link between the form JSB has assumed as the urban focal point of Dhaka and its symbolic connection with the long process of societal transformation that has led to its social construct as a democratic entity. The connection drawn in this paper between the democratic status and the function of urban focal point of JSB partakes of the symbolic, the metaphorical and the imagined Such an imagined link between society and other discourses is a widely accepted norm in the treatise of the built environment and the creative arts, such as language and visual arts (Lawrence, Low, 1990). With regard to the built environment Lawrence and Low argue, ‘Theories of metaphor have been used by a number of anthropologists to explore architecture and the built environment as a symbolically encoded cultural meaning system’. (190, p. 472)
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