Meditations in Entropy

<p>¿The changing climate is no longer debatable here, it is this land¿s unfeigned, monstrous reality,¿ says Dhaka-based architect Kashef Chowdhury. His firm URBANA, established in 1995, has produced an astonishingly diverse collection of works of divergent scales, typologies, and contexts and located in one of the meteorologically most complex and 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, projects for locations in the country¿s north near the Himalaya mountains facing devouring waves of floods, and architectural interventions in one of the world¿s densest metropolitan areas: URBANA¿s designs are incisive critical responses to dissimilar issues and urgencies. They are all rooted in the belief that architecture can no longer be optical or sensational, but be built of philosophy and empathy for our increasingly fragile and shared ecological and human condition.</p>