Louis Kahn’s National Assembly in Dhaka , Bangladesh , represents architect’s realization of a “long search for a new kind of modernism that transforms monumentality into a symbolic vehicle for the nurturing of a participatory community, and intertwines that monumentality with an authenticity that situates the self”.
For years Kahn had yearned to build a governmental institution. He believed in the virtue of democracy and of a vibrant political sphere. Kahn advocated citizen participation in the public realm as essential to the health of democracy. He also argued that in contemporary society, city hall – as equivalent of parliament on municipal level – did little to foster citizen participation. Kahn believed that is upon the architects to encourage civic responsibility with landmarks, which will help build patriotism, which he considered to be essential if citizens were to be active politically for the common good. The architect was to be a social activist.
Many of Kahn’s political commitments found its place in Dhaka. Assembly’s conceptual design had in mind a creation of a new capitol in a new country, and was to be indicative of a new way of life, that of a democracy. From the very beginning of the project design, Kahn south to create a landmark that would “obligate people to view it as a material symbol of the political institution housed within and of the society they serve”. He also had in mind a notion of monumentality for such an important venue. However, he believed the building should be opened to the people and not restricted to the government officials only. He believed that anybody who crosses into the spatial arena of National Assembly would be transported, from self-centered and self–interested daily life, “to be reminded of her elevated status as a citizen of a polity”. Kahn wished to create architecture for democracy.
To bring its forms closer to the local culture, Kahn paid much of the attention on the orienting the sitting and composition of the National Assembly Building and adjoining functions, considering the culture and the place they would serve, and by paying attention to the climate and architectural intentions of the Indian subcontinent. “In doing so, he built a language that was locally comprehensible while remaining modern, laying the ground for citizens to appropriate the complex as an institution of their own highest ideals”.
Goldhagen, Sarah Williams. Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism. Yale University Press. 2001.