"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. Meditations in Entropy is the first-ever comprehensive monograph on the work of Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA. It features 16 of the firm's designs in detail through photographs by acclaimed architectural photographer Hélène Binet and numerous plans, drawings, sketches, and further images. Perceptive essays are contributed by eminent critics and historians Kenneth Frampton, Robert McCarter, and William J R Curtis. The book is rounded-off with conversations between Chowdhury, Swiss architect Niklaus Graber, and the distinguished architectural historian Philip Ursprung that further explicate URBANA's unique approach. AUTHORS: Kashef Chowdhury founded his Dhaka-based firm URBANA in 1995. The firm has since produced a diverse body of works of divergent scales, typologies, and contexts in Bangladesh and has been awarded numerous international prizes. Kenneth Frampton is Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and one of the world's most distinguished historians of modernist architecture. Robert McCarter is a practicing architect, professor of architecture, and author. He is the Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture at Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. SELLING POINTS: . First ever monograph on the internationally recognised Dhaka-based architecture firm URBANA . Traces nearly three decades of URBANA's trajectory in confronting immense challenges such as complex weather conditions and climate change, major migration movements, and highest urban density . Features in detail 16 of URBANA's designs that demonstrate the firm's unique focus on these pressing issues . Richly illustrated with images by acclaimed architectural photographer Hélène Binet and numerous plans, drawings, and sketches, most of them previously unpublished . With contributions by distinguished architecture critics and historians 120 colour illustrations
