For our Inspiration series, staff at The Modern House were asked to list a location, film, painting, building, or piece of music that inspired their interest in Modernism.

For our Appraisals Specialist, James, it’s Louis Khan’s National Assembly Building in Dhaka, designed in 1962 and completed in 1982, that stands out as a source of fascination …

“It is with predictable ease that structures of rustic simplicity, and those that possess a symmetry with nature capture my attention. Which is why it is surprising that Louis Kahn’s monolithic National Assembly Building in Dhaka has the ability to inspire in me such awe and fascination.

Composed of geometric shapes and columns parted by light, constructed of concrete and inlaid white marble, it is a design rooted in local context, but without Bangladeshi precedent; a modern building set boldly within a non-modern context, the Bengali desert.”