Ripin Kalra Research 2025

Sustainable Built Environment Futures for Bangladesh

In collaboration with The Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements, Bangladesh with funding from The British Council, Bangladesh.

With support from the British Council, the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements brought together global practitioners and academics to explore future trajectories for sustainable built environments in Bangladesh. As Bangladesh rapidly moves towards a middle income status, it must contend with high rates of urbanisation, population growth, poverty, environmental degradation and threats from climate change. There are significant challenges in determining appropriate practices to create and maintain sustainable built environments in Bangladesh. This is because, even with a small surface area, the country has extensive diversity of landscapes, weather, bio-diversity and culture.

Through a series of interactive discourses informed by research and case-studies, the research team identified a number of practices, at macro and micro levels and across construction and social environments, that can help shape future sustainable built environments in Bangladesh: sustainable building forms; building for social welfare; improving education access; advancing food production; applying modularity; planning for climate resilience; reviving indigenous practices; applying adaptive reuse; practising material innovations; creating innovation in water and energy. The research also identified examplar case studies of such practices that could inform and be integrated with design and planning education locally.