Saiqa Iqbal Meghna and Suvro Sovon Chowdhury, co-founders of SthaNiK and Studio Morphogenesis, are redefining architecture in Bangladesh by treating design as both an ethical manifesto and a strategic business asset. Rooted in Dhaka yet informed by global experiences, their practice champions architecture that embraces impermanence, climate fluidity, and coexistence with nature. From the internationally acclaimed Zebun Nessa Mosque to overlooked corners of Dhaka, they demonstrate how thoughtful design can deliver measurable business value. In this conversation, they discuss democratic architecture, local materiality, and the future of urban resilience — offering insights that thoughtful design delivers measurable returns — from efficiency and durability to human dignity and collective resilience.

In an interview previously, you mentioned the phrase "soft shelter" once. How do you intellectually define soft shelter, especially in a country like ours?

Meghna: Soft shelter is, for me, an ethical position: a manifesto for democratic architecture that nurtures life, embraces coexistence, and allows both people and nature to flourish together. In the Bengal Delta, where landscapes, rivers and livelihoods are constantly shifting, architecture cannot rely on permanence alone. It must negotiate with climate, uncertainty and human diversity.

A soft shelter manifests through porous pavilion forms that respond to weather, emotions, and everyday rituals, functioning less as static objects and more as atmospheric events. By treating water as an active architectural element — cooling microclimates, restoring ecology, and supporting life — these spaces create environments of care that remain generous, adaptive, and alive.

Your studio focuses heavily on tropical resilience. In a changing monsoon climate, how do you view the concept of permanence? Should buildings be designed to age and decay alongside nature?

Suvro: Resilience is characterised by adaptability. Our monsoon delta is unique in many ways, and one of its most prominent attributes that we are currently misreading is the fluidity of its landscape. This fluidity governs the impermanent character of the forms we make and build. What we create should act and react as living bodies; therefore, they should be allowed to decay and age while also being cared for.

The core idea we try to execute is that built forms should be designed and made to become part of nature, embracing impermanence while performing through human interventions and activities.

ARCHITECTS SAIQA IQBAL MEGHNA AND SUVRO SOVON CHOWDHURY, Co-founders, SthaNiK and Studio Morphogenesis

Is leaning into local materiality a purely aesthetic choice, or is it becoming a shrewder, more economically resilient way to build in Bangladesh right now?

Suvro: Building in a particular context using local materials should always be the primary choice. However, practice is often governed by capitalist notions of aesthetics, cost, trending lifestyles, and the apparent promise of durability and low maintenance.

Using local materials in our context requires careful consideration, as our building material palette is limited. At the same time, easy access to synthetic materials and aggressive, choice-driven advertising have saturated the market to such an extent that local materials and their applications have become increasingly scarce. However, the most important achievement in our practice is that this limited palette of local and natural materials has also created opportunities for customisation, both through material experimentation and through innovative construction processes.

Responding to context with new aesthetic possibilities and approaches that align with users' needs will continue to be the ideal way to build. This process is also connected to ethical practices, which are ultimately more sustainable in the truest sense.

With growing awareness of urban wellness and liveability, how do you convince commercial developers that climate-adaptive, breathable buildings are what premium buyers now demand?

Suvro: Whether in urban, peri-urban, or rural contexts, every place people inhabit must be designed and planned to ensure human comfort of all its participants, creating places that are women-friendly, child-friendly, elderly-friendly, and inclusive for everyone.

What we have understood through our practice is that the primary concern should be the scale of intervention. This question addresses both the physical and metaphysical dimensions of an entity.

As we mentioned earlier, whenever a built form or human intervention is introduced into the natural environment, it should establish a dialogue with the atmosphere as a living body. If this can be achieved, performance, breathability, tactility, and all the qualities that enhance living conditions will naturally become visible and identifiable. The condition that accommodates all elements of nature while ensuring a healthy and habitable environment for everyone living within, around, or alongside it is, in our view, the true definition of a premium condition.

The core idea we try to execute is that built forms should be designed and made to become part of nature, embracing impermanence while performing through human interventions and activities.

How do your individual strengths complement each other when you are collaborating?

Meghna: One of the greatest strengths of our partnership is that we begin from a shared ethical ground rooted in secular ideology rather than similar personalities. Both of us emerged from Dhaka in the 1980s, shaped by political instability, rapid urban expansion and environmental precarity. We also inherited strong traditions of public responsibility. This resonates with Amartya Sen's reflections in Home in the World, and even earlier with Rabindranath Tagore's cosmopolitan humanism, where belonging is understood as plural, formed through movement across cultures rather than enclosure within fixed identities.

Since founding SthaNiK in 2008 and extending our collaboration through Studio Morphogenesis Ltd. in 2014, our work has consistently explored porosity — spatial, material and social. Porosity is not a stylistic gesture but a structural way of organising relationships between people, climate and construction. Light, air, water and movement become active participants in architecture.

Personally, I tend to focus more on lived experience — care, inclusion, atmosphere and the emotional life of space — while Suvro often brings a complementary perspective grounded in site realities, construction, making and possibility. We challenge one another without competing. After sixteen years of working together, we have learned that disagreement often produces better architecture.

Given that beautiful architecture is often dismissed as an unnecessary expense, how do you pitch thoughtful design as a tangible asset to a practical client, especially when projects like the Zebun Nessa Mosque demonstrate its direct impact on human welfare and productivity?

Meghna: I have always been interested in searching for beauty in the most ordinary places. For me, beauty is never an added layer of decoration. As Peter Zumthor notes, once function, structure, material, context and atmosphere have all been resolved, architecture has one final responsibility — to become beautiful. That beauty is simply the consequence of everything being in its right place.

From a practical perspective, thoughtful architecture reduces heat gain, improves daylight and natural ventilation, lowers operational costs and creates healthier environments. Those are measurable benefits. But there is another value that is harder to quantify: dignity, sense of belongingness.

When people feel respected by the spaces they inhabit, they care for them more, work better and build stronger communities. Perhaps Zebun Nessa Mosque demonstrates that beauty and performance are not opposing ambitions — they are inseparable investments in human wellbeing, institutional value and long-term resilience.

Zebun Nessa Mosque. Photo Credit: Truphoto Studio

From Shomaj Biggyan Chattar to other overlooked corners of Dhaka, what’s your strategy for finding these ”non-places” and shaping them into places of meaning?

Suvro: Abolishing the concept of "negative" spaces is one of our major concerns in design and planning. Every space within the public realm should be approachable, accessible, and actively used. Through our practice, we have perceived and experienced that subtle interventions are often more successful in transforming overlooked places into meaningful public spaces.

As John Gehl highlights in Life Between Buildings, unintended spaces can be successfully activated and celebrated through thoughtful interventions. The key is establishing permeability and accessibility to give these unidentifiable areas purpose, followed by cultivating a sense of belonging and attachment among users.

In the case of Shomaj Biggyan Chattar at the University of Dhaka, these transformations were ultimately carried forward by the users themselves. Despite a few local interruptions, the place now thrives through spontaneous and unscripted occupation, which we recognise as one of the primary indicators of success in designing and planning public space.

The core idea we try to execute is that built forms should be designed and made to become part of nature, embracing impermanence while performing through human interventions and activities.

You both chose schools for their cities as much as their institutions. Looking back, how did Barcelona and London become part of your education, and how do their public lives inform your designs for Bangladesh?

Meghna: Living in cities like London and Barcelona taught us that architecture is inseparable from public life. Our most important lessons happened outside the classroom — in pedestrian-friendly ramblas, inclusive plazas, neighbourhood streets, markets and waterfronts where everyday life unfolded with remarkable generosity. We realised that a city's success is measured less by its iconic buildings than by how well they integrate with their surroundings, the quality of their public spaces, and the dignity they offer people regardless of gender, age or class.

Returning to Dhaka, we began asking what public space should mean in a monsoon delta. Our climate demands spaces that welcome rain, embrace informality, work with local materials and encourage coexistence. Those cities taught us how to see cities as living social ecosystems rather than collections of buildings. We hope Dhaka can increasingly embrace multiplicity and hybridity, remaining open to cultural exchange rather than closed by certainty.

With the mosque now recognised globally by TIME and honoured with the 2026 RIBA Award for Excellence, your studio holds a pivotal place in architectural discourse. If you could give Bangladesh’s policymakers one design or planning mandate to future-proof the country, what would it be?

Meghna: If we could recommend one mandate, it would be to open the grand plaza of Shangshad Bhaban to the public. Bangladesh needs democratic civic spaces at a metropolitan scale, while gender-inclusive public space should be a legal requirement in every development, regardless of size. As Louis I. Kahn observed, “A city is the place of availabilities. It is the place where a small boy, as he walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his whole life.”

Public space is where those possibilities emerge. Streets, parks, waterfronts and civic squares are not leftover land — they are essential public infrastructure. Every citizen, regardless of age, gender, income or ability, deserves beautiful public space within walking distance.