Spending more than 100 days at the University of Pennsylvania’s architecture archive in Philadelphia, excavating into more than 7,000 drawings and 1,000 letters, communications, travel documents, receipts, and photographs exchanged among the designer, clients, and government officials, I investigated the American, modernist architect, Louis I. Kahn’s National Capitol Complex(1963-1983) in Dacca, the capital of previous East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), the eastern part of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. I question- why and how amid the tumultuous Cold War, Kahn designed the most important building of the newly democratic country. My archival findings- texts and visuals- decode the Complex’s design vocabulary as a perplexing paradox. The Complex, that was to be a symbol of Pakistan’s Islamic democracy followed the models of a church and a synagogue that Kahn had designed for the United States. Yet, even with the robust Western and non-Islamic influences, the Capitol Complex has taken on a powerful place in the nation’s collective imagination. Subsequently, I examine how Kahn’s designed built environment aids in the construction of the national identity of Bangladesh’s postcolonial and postwar paradigms (after 1947 and 1971) today. Holistically, my research probes into Western colonialism and modernism’s instrumentality in homogenizing history, tradition, and culture across the globe.
