Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban
Interesting facts
- Kahn treated the outer blocks as giant hollow columns that gather daylight, with rooms set inside them and light courts between them.
- The eight outer blocks rise to about 110 feet, while the central octagon holding the assembly chamber reaches about 155 feet.
- The assembly chamber is up to about 117 feet high, and its lighting hangs from a single metal web stretched across the whole hall beneath the shell roof.
- Kahn designed the entire complex, not just the assembly building: the lawns, the lake and the residences for members of parliament.
- While the building stood unfinished after independence, Bangladesh's lawmakers met in an older structure now known as the Old Sangsad Bhaban.
- The finished complex cost about 1,332 million taka, roughly 32 million US dollars at the time.
- The South Plaza on Manik Mia Avenue rises gradually to about 20 feet and conceals the main mechanical plant beneath its steps and ramps.
- In 2016 the government obtained Kahn's original drawings from his former partner Henry Wilcots to guide a return to the intended layout.
- The building plays a central part in My Architect, the 2003 documentary about Louis Kahn's life and work.
- Kahn's biographer Robert McCarter ranked it among the most significant buildings of the twentieth century, and The Globe and Mail listed it among seven architectural wonders.
Why it is worth it
The National Parliament House of Bangladesh is one of the landmarks of twentieth-century architecture: a cluster of massive concrete volumes standing in an artificial lake, its walls cut through with enormous circles, triangles and rectangles that pull light deep into the interior. It is the work of the American architect Louis Kahn, and the complex at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka covers about 84 hectares, making it one of the largest legislative compounds in the world.
The project began when Dhaka was the capital of East Pakistan. In 1959 the military ruler Ayub Khan made the city Pakistan's second capital and decided to build a seat for the national assembly there. The Bengali architect Muzharul Islam advised bringing in a leading international designer; after Alvar Aalto and Le Corbusier proved unavailable, he recruited Kahn, his former teacher at Yale. Kahn presented a first design in 1960 and construction began in 1964. Work stopped during the 1971 Liberation War, and in 1974 the government of independent Bangladesh chose to complete the building to the original design. Kahn died in 1974 with the project roughly three-quarters done, and his associate David Wisdom saw it through; it was completed in January 1982. In 1989 it received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
The main building is made of nine blocks: eight peripheral ones around a central octagon that rises higher than the rest, all linked so that from outside the whole reads as a single mass. At the heart is the assembly chamber, seating up to 354 members under a parabolic shell roof, with a gap left beneath it so that daylight reflected off the surrounding walls filters down into the hall. Kahn intended the complex to draw on Bengali landscape and heritage; the lake wrapped around three sides of the main building evokes the country's rivers. The South Plaza faces Manik Mia Avenue, and north of the grounds lies Crescent Lake.
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is a vast and densely populated city on the Buriganga River.
Getting there
The parliament stands in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, central Dhaka, about 2.5 km from Dhanmondi. The nearest airport is Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (DAC), about 9 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban is the Parliament house of Bangladesh, located at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka. Initially designed for the Parliament of Pakistan by architect Louis Kahn, the complex is one of the largest legislative complexes in the world, covering 840,000 m2.
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