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The National Assembly Building in Dacca Bangladesh, by Louis Kahn
Is architecture the last frontier?
Any self-serving, "artistic" architect can have his day in the field. Once his buildings have been commissioned by the "in crowd", and built, they are there to last. And hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people will get to visit these "emperor has no clothes" structures.
Paintings, on the other hand, go to the single individuals, albeit at exorbitant prices, and no-one else need see them ever again.
So, this is the ultimate conceit of these modern architects. It is a means of forcefully interjecting into society their inner drives and inconclusive ideas.
I think that is why they are such globe-trotters. They cannot commit to a local style, where eventually the inhabitants will demand a building they can relate to.
By shifting geography constantly, they can dot the world's landscape with their inner musings, until they either get rejected, or find another location and move on.
This was how Louis Kahn lived.
His last piece that was built, having taken close to 20 years from design to finished structure, was unsurprisingly in South Asia.
The formidable fort-like National Assembly Building in Bangladesh is another one of those buildings which bear absolutely no relation to the geography, culture and I would venture to say, even the aesthetics of that country.
I would have thought the Bangladeshi would have had more insight than bringing in another foreigner (haven't they been through that already?) to dictate one of the most important buildings of their country.
The National Assembly is where democratic decisions are made, at least in theory. Yet, looking at this building, what comes to mind is a prison.
But then, what we choose is a symptom of who we are. Perhaps it is in the psyche of the Bangladeshi, and let's be fair, of all us modern people, to accept submissively these buildings that get tossed out at us.
Kahn collapsed in a bathroom in New York's Penn Station, and his body was not identified for three days. He had just returned from a trip to India.
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The Interior of the National Assembly in Dacca Bangladesh