Several Bangladeshi projects are among the 20 short-listed projects for Aga Khan Award for Architecture for 2016.
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, declared after every three years and the winners get US$1 million prize money and this year it will be declared in the last quarter of the year. Three Bangladeshi projects, so far, won the award.
“Bangladesh has global standard architectures that can work in any international projects,” said Farrokh Derakhshani, director of Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Derakhshani, who recently visited Dhaka to attend the Dhaka Art Summit, said: “I do believe [that they have international standard] and that’s why we hired a Bangladeshi architecture to do the project titled Aga Khan Academy.”
The Aga Khan Development Network is going to build the high profile and international standard academy on 20 acres of land in Dhaka and its design is still underway, he said.
Derakhshani reminded that parliament building and Grameen Bank Housing project won the award in 1989 while another project in which two Austrian and German architects built a house with earth and bamboo in Dinajpur got the award in 2007.
Sharing his experience at the Dhaka Art Summit, he said: “A good number of architectures displayed their works at the exhibition.”
Referring to famous architects Mazharul Islam and Bashirul Haque, he said: “There are some good architect schools in Bangladesh.”
Architecture is important to improve quality of life as the children who live in good house, and good neighbourhood and better building schools are better educated than those who do not enjoy those facilities, he added.
Derakhshani, who has been involved in the profession for over four decades, stated that there should be coordination among different public institutions like public works, WASA, municipality corporations and electricity departments to provide better service to the society.
