Meditations in Entropy

Since 1995, Dhaka-based architecture firm Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA has produced an astonishing collection of works of divergent scales, typologies, and contexts located in one of the most meteorologically challenging regions in the world. A hospital introduced into an economy decimated by rising oceans, a shelter against cyclones in Bangladesh’s southern coastal region, and architectural interventions in one of the world’s densest metropolitan areas: Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA’s designs are incisive, critical responses to varied issues and urgencies rooted in the belief that architecture must be a reflection of, and sympathetic to, increasingly fragile ecological conditions.

Meditations in Entropy is the first full monograph on the work of Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA. It features 18 of the firm’s realized designs in detail through photographs by acclaimed architectural photographer Hélène Binet as well as numerous plans, drawings, sketches, and other images. Perceptive essays are contributed by the distinguished critics and historians Kenneth Frampton, Robert McCarter, William J. R. Curtis, and Philip Ursprung, and by Ainun Nishat, a renowned water resource and climate change specialist. An illustrated catalogue of Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA’s projects and realized buildings rounds off this beautifully designed volume.