Q&A
What projects are you working on now that are most meaningful to you?
The most meaningful project to me right now is Archsociety, a growing online community of architects and students that I started when I was a third-year student in architecture in 2005. I believe architecture education is tough, ambiguous, versatile and expensive, where easy access to information, discussion and collaborative actions are necessary. I observed a serious lack of open source architectural resources online and dreamt of a global open source plat-form of knowledge and resource sharing. And it worked, though not to the extent it potentially could. still, the members of Archsociety are now helping each other and growing a global collaborative culture of architectural education over the Internet. And in collaboration with Discourse, Archsociety arranges regular gatherings, lectures, and movie and video shows in Dhaka with students and architects called, "Discourse: architecture … in search of." Arch-society is also planning to develop an easy guide for making better homes containing basic knowledge of shelter and architecture to spread in the cyclone and flood-affected regions.
Besides your work, what issues/ideas/pursuits are you passionate about?
what Cameron Sinclair did in Architecture for Humanity and open Architecture Network rocked my enthusiasm about open source architecture. The idea is great. After watching the TED Prize video of Cameron, it made me feel more strongly about what I was doing and what I was thinking about open source knowledge sharing for architectural education.
What do you do for fun?
I mostly hang out with friends. That's the most fulfilling part of my day. I know nearly every detail of every café near me. I know who makes the best kebab, naan roti, biriany, lassi, and who makes the best coffee, best chicken, best pizza. I know where to find the best street food in Dhaka, even though I don't actually eat much. And I always try hard not to miss a single classical or rock concert, or a single lecture on architecture in Dhaka city.
Recount a surprising anecdote about yourself that few people know.
Rickshaws are the most popular vehicle in Bangladesh. A big portion of low-income people are involved in rickshaw pulling. when I was in secondary school, our family visited Nawabganj to see the village fair during the Eid vacation. on a dark night, one of my cousins and I went out to see what happens in the fair overnight. It was almost five kilometers away from my grandma's house, so we took a rickshaw-van and started pulling it towards the fair through the highway by ourselves. People on the street started calling out to us to take a seat on our van, and we decided to take the chance. we carried passengers to the fair, and when we were satisfied with our earnings, we stopped and went in ourselves. some gambling corners caught our eyes. I didn't know what gambling was, actually, but we started playing and after an hour we realized we had gambled away all of our hard-earned rickshaw earnings.
