In 1963, Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974), the Jewish-American, modernist architect was commissioned to design the Capitol of East-Pakistan (later Bangladesh, 1971). Amid the Cold War, Pakistan’s martial law government wanted an architecture that would become the democratic emblem of the country, forge its identity, and symbolize modernization. With close to 25,000 laborers, and almost two-fold the original budget, the project was completed in 1983, after Kahn’s death (1974). Upon completion, the Capitol not only shaped Bangladesh’s national identity but also became the magnum opus of the 21st century. During its design, Kahn worked on numerous projects including post-war housing and urban development in Israel. Oddly, Pakistan, the Islamic Republic, had hostile relations with Israel. Additionally, he intensely engaged in several synagogue designs, that were to play an important role in the identity formation of the Jewish-American populace. Consequently, some of the architectural vocabulary Kahn used in the western world and more precisely in the synagogues, appear in the Capitol. By scrutinizing copious drawings, newspaper clips, memes, photographs, audio/videos, and sketches housed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Louis Kahn archive, this research-autopsy probes the formation of a vernacularized democratic landscape and thus the instrumentality of American neocolonialism operational through the built-environment.
