In a bid to preserve the original design of the parliament complex and its adjacent areas, the government has collected architect Louis I Kahn’s final drawing inventory list from the US.
“The final drawing inventory list was sent from the USA on January 15, 2016,” Housing and Public Works Minister Engineer Mosharraf Hossain told the parliament yesterday in reply to a question.
Mosharraf said as per the directives of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the architectural archive at University of Pennsylvania was contacted through email with requests for Kahn’s designs of the Parliament complex and other architectural designs of the mega project taken for adjacent areas.
As fee for finding out the design from the archive and preparing the drawing inventory list, $3,550 was sent to the US through Bangladesh Bank on November 8, 2015, the minister said.
Process is under way to sort out necessary designs from the list, he added.
On November 17 last year, the minister told the House that after getting the designs, necessary actions would be taken for proper preservation of the parliament and all the structures on its adjacent areas.
The Housing and Public Works Ministry also proposed removing the graves of seven distinguished personalities from the parliament complex area as those were not in the original design.
BNP founder and late president Ziaur Rahman is also buried at Chandrima Udyan, which is within the boundaries drawn by Kahn.
There are also seven establishments in the area that were not in Kahn’s original design.
