Louis Kahn's Tiger City

In 1985, I was given a scholarship to go to Bangladesh to study the buildings designed by the great American architect Louis I. Kahn. On that trip, I visited Kahn’s famous parliamentary complex Sher-e-Bangla Nagor, also known as the Tiger City. The complex was the beating heart of the newly formed democratic nation. I was unprepared for the raw emotional power and poetic beauty of these buildings. Tiger City looked futuristic and ancient at the same time.In order to make this feature-length documentary film, I went on a worldwide quest to more than fourteen countries to find out how this Estonian-born American architect built such a daringly modern and monumental complex in a culturally rich but economically shattered country. How did he win such a high-profile commission ten thousand miles from his home in Philadelphia? What force of will enabled him to design a capital complex on the tabula rasa of the rice paddies of Bangladesh?

The full story of Kahn’s parliamentary complex had not yet been told, and I traveled in the architect’s footsteps to see and experience what he experienced, to understand how this American visionary came to South Asia to build his masterpiece. In the early 1960s, Louis I. Kahn was invited by the West Pakistani government to design the buildings that would serve as their eastern capital, which, after the East Pakistani freedom struggle, became the capital complex of Bangladesh. The story of Kahn’s Tiger City is tied to South Asia and to modern world history. Here, Kahn conceived of a unique and provocative design and the Bangladeshis upheld his vision even when the country was war-torn and its economy completely destroyed. Today, Kahn’s parliamentary complex is recognized the world over as a modern monument and as his magnum opus.In the end, the film explores what it means to be a creator willing to go into debt and die for one’s work. It examines what it means to be a true artist in a hyper-commercial world.