Opinions, Academic Insights, and Literary Critiques
A few weeks ago, I had the rare opportunity to study two remarkable Mughal paintings from the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C. Depicting the Mughal emperor Jahangir and Empress Nur Jahan, these works are typically kept in the museum’s storage and are only brought out for major exhibitions. […]
When I picked up The Lost Van Gogh by Jonathan Santlofer, I expected a thrilling art-heist story, perhaps something along the lines of what Dan Brown achieved with The Da Vinci Code in the 2000s. As someone who has been exposed to art history through years of study since the latter was published in 2006, […]
I had the pleasure of presenting at the 15th Biennial Symposium of the Latrobe Chapter of SAH, held at The Catholic University of America and the National Building Museum. The conference theme was Architecture and National Identity, and featured a keynote by Lawrence Vale, Professor Emeritus at MIT, whose seminal book on this topic helped […]
This weekend, I had the pleasure of presenting at the annual Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) Conference, held in the beautiful Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza, an architectural gem of French Art Deco design. My paper, “Museums as a Site of Healing for Indigenous Communities,” was part of the session “Artist and the Museum in the […]
In today’s India, where Hindutva politics has recast the Mughal past as a symbol of tyranny and decline, it’s worth remembering that the Mughals once practiced a remarkable degree of religious tolerance—at a time when much of Europe was torn apart by wars of religion. Nowhere is this spirit of cross-faith encounter more vividly expressed […]
Last year, I had the opportunity to intern at the Paul Revere House in Boston, one of the nation’s oldest and most iconic historic house museums. Since the Revolutionary War, Americans have been deeply invested in preserving historically significant homes and transforming them into museums. These spaces are unique because they bring together three diverse fields of inquiry: historic preservation, architectural history, and museum studies.
In the summer of 2024, while my partner was a visiting scholar at Harvard University, we stayed at the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR), Harvard Divinity School. Designed in 1960 by Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert, then dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, the CSWR is a striking modernist building rooted […]
In Spring 2025, I successfully defended my thesis for the MS in Architecture degree at the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. My thesis examined the architectural patronage of Empress Nur Jahan in 17th-century India, through the lens of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. Another significant milestone this semester was […]
In December 2024, I wrapped up my position as an Interpretation Intern at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM). Over the past three months, my fellow intern, Asher, and I worked on laying the groundwork for an interpretive audit of the museum’s extensive collection, focusing on diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility. While I’ve had internships at […]
In the article titled Global Homogenization of Public Space? A Comparison of “Western” and “Eastern” Contexts, authors Panjaitan, Pojani and Darchen provide a comprehensive view about public spaces in Southeast Asian cities, and how the differences in the public spheres in the Eastern world has led to an entirely different typology of public spaces. The […]
Seventy feet below ground level, at the bottom of Lower Manhattan’s bedrock, an engineering marvel resurfaced following the events of September 11. This was a massive void, known as “the bathtub,” occupying an area of sixteen acres, and was made possible due to a specialized foundation system. It was because of this unique base that […]
In the Introduction to Companion to Public Space, Vikas Mehta and Danilo Palazzo make one of the most important observations in the first paragraph, where they write about how private sectors often try to regulate access to public spaces to “limit dissent.” This suggests that any kind of difference in opinion, or protests for that […]
This week, I completed my summer internship at the Paul Revere House, one of the earliest historic house museums of the United States, located in the oldest building in downtown Boston. This was the first museum I had worked at, and I couldn’t have started my museum career at a better working environment. Being a […]
“Sometimes I feel like I titled this book Kittens and Rainbows, and then I wrote hell.” This quote pretty much sums up what the memoir by Maggie Smith is like. In brief chapters, with some being as short as a single sentence or a few words, Smith chronicles the end of her marriage, the painfully long […]
This July, American architect Michael Graves would have turned 90 years old. He was also a designer, an educator, a prominent figure who contributed to American postmodernist architecture, and an alumnus from the College of Applied Arts at the University of Cincinnati. To celebrate his legacy, and as part of my work at DAAP Library, […]
This semester, I worked part time at the library of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati, and the culmination of my work here involved curating and designing exhibits for displays within the library area. For one of those displays, I chose a collection of drawings and objects […]
Creative Careers in Museums by Jan E. Burdick was listed as a required reading for a museum internship that I am about to undertake this summer, and it turned out to be such an enjoyable book that went beyond its academic purposes. Not only does the book highlight different sections of a museum and the […]
Earlier this month, I presented a paper on the fetishization of female bodies in religious art from South Asia, at the Graduate Student Symposium, organized by University of Cincinnati’s School of Public and International Affairs. In my presentation, I spoke about the problematic way museum didactics are written about female figures in Hindu and Buddhist […]
One of the highlights for me this semester was presenting a lecture on modern architecture of Bangladesh to 100+ students at University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. This was part of a course on History of Modern Architecture, where I also worked as a TA throughout the semester. The biggest challenge […]
At the end of Spring Semester 2024, my friend and classmate Edmond Drenogllava invited me to the final review of a housing studio he taught this semester at University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, with 3rd year undergraduate students of architecture. It was exciting for me to see the kind of […]
Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture, originally published in 1923, emerged around the same time as fascism and colonial regimes were developing in Europe as well as other parts of the world. A lot of the general dogma surrounding colonization was infiltrating the conversations about architecture during that period. As a result of which, Corbusier […]
This afternoon, I presented my research on the writing skills of architecture students in Dhaka, at the 14th Annual UC Graduate Student Conference, organized by the Department of English at UC. This research was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of one of my courses for the Master of Architecture degree I was pursuing […]
In his book Moderne Architektur, published towards the end of 19th century, Otto Wagner brings forth the idea that it is necessary for an architect to find a sense of fulfillment that is inherent within themselves. He argues that this feeling of satisfaction should encourage an architect to continue working with love and dedication, even […]
I came across this book when it was listed as one of the top thrillers of 2023 by New York Times Books, and needless to say, it does not disappoint. It has all the essential elements of a great murder mystery: protagonist with a questionable past, a creepy house, horrific murders of a wealthy family, […]
For my course on Visual Arts Research Methods, I decided to research on how museum settings can become a space of healing for indigenous communities whose cultures have been appropriated by museum authorities of western ethnological museums. Part of the arts-based research method was incorporating a non-written element into the research paper or Living Inquiry […]
If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English tells the story of an American born Egyptian woman, who returns to Cairo following the revolution, and her relationship with one of the activists from the revolution, a photographer from the rural part of the country. They find each other interesting because of their differences, but it is the […]
Leon Battista Alberti begins his treatise On the Art of Building in Ten Books by mentioning that architecture is made up of two elements: lineamentia or linear characteristics of a building, which is obtained from the mind; and matteria or materials of a building, which comes from nature. Additionally, with regards to the linear characteristics […]
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is easily one of the best books I have read this year. The story starts off at a very slow pace, when it introduces the protagonists, twin sisters Stella and Desiree who are light skinned and black. Eventually, the sisters run away from their hometown Mallard and then Stella decides […]
Such a Fun Age is a very timely and relevant portrayal of white savior narrative and the very subtle layers performative activism and woke culture. The writing style flows naturally and is written in a simplistic manner, despite its serious theme which deals with the nuances of race and class privilege. The plot centers on […]
For me, research has always been related to an attempt to solve some problems. This is something that is addressed in J. H. Rolling’s essay on Arts-Based Research in Education. He mentions that research can create new knowledge that can solve a problem, or reconfigure a query surrounding that issue which leads to more research. The […]
In Books I to V of his treatise On Architecture, Vitruvius chalks out a detailed guideline for all the relevant knowledge an architect may possibly need in the practice of architecture. And this include both theory and practice. While talking about theory, he justifies the need for studying philosophy by saying that it provides answer […]
While we were still reeling from the after effects of the disastrous year that 2020 was, 2021 became the year for healing and more resilience. Amidst all the chaos, I am glad to have survived yet another year of highs and lows, and throughout all of this, I managed to read some remarkable books. Here […]
Bangladesh, along with other parts of the world, has witnessed an increasing amount of environmental disasters as a result of climate change. On the other hand, due to poor planning and lack of regulations, more new hazards are on the rise in our cities. As the country turns fifty this year, it is high time […]
To understand what it means to live and experience a city that is still reeling from the effects of colonialism, one does not need to look further than Kolkata. Unlike other Indian cities such as Ahmedabad or Chandigarh, Kolkata was not able to adapt the style of modernism that became the referential model for architecture […]
It was a compelling and novel proposition. A young Stanford dropout wanted to develop a blood test analyzer that requires no syringe and only a drop of blood. And thus began Elizabeth Holmes’ journey with Theranos. Soon, her confidence and eagerness to revolutionize healthcare impressed congressmen, military officials and seasoned professionals to invest millions of […]
Here’s my TBR pile, which includes two books by Bangladeshi authors which I got from Dhaka Lit Fest a few years ago. I feel like the English books written by Bangladeshi authors is always a hit-or-miss situation. Most of them focus too much on the expat lives, or on the lives of those living below […]
[This article was previously published on ‘The Daily Star’ on 25th February, 2021. Illustration by Ehsanur Raza Ronny.]
This time period between 1947 and 1971 is somehow deliberately absent in the works of scholars from both East and West Pakistan. However, we must critically consider that absence, an intellectual blind spot, as it is essential in developing our historical consciousness, which affects the practice of architecture. We cannot ignore that time period, and […]
I have heard horror stories from relatives and friends about getting detained at US airports or their luggage getting misplaced or lost during international travels. I myself hadn’t faced any of it until my recent trip to the US. My mom and I landed at Washington Dulles Airport on a Wednesday afternoon in February, 2020. […]
Today, my colleagues and I were having the following conversation in the office vehicle, on our way to a work event. T: Look! That Range Rover in that showroom is a plug-in hybrid! M: Range Rovers are so big, and heavy, it wouldn’t even make a 0.5% difference.Me: It’s like those celebrities who fly private jets […]