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MoMA awards its first Ambasz Prize to Bangladesh’s Friendship Centre

New York’s Museum of Modern Art has chosen Kashef Chowdhury/URBANA’s Friendship Centre in Bangladesh for its inaugural Ambasz-MoMA Prize. The award divides 200,000 dollars between the architect and tree planting in the client’s honour. Completed in 2011, the training centre uses local brick, an earthen flood barrier and open courtyards in a vulnerable river delta.

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Local brick courtyards, rainwater collection pools, grass-planted roofs and earthen flood embankment of the Friendship Centre in Gaibandha, Bangladesh.

Friendship Centre wins the inaugural prize

New York’s Museum of Modern Art, known as MoMA, has awarded its first Ambasz-MoMA architecture prize to Kashef Chowdhury/URBANA, an architectural practice based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The winning project is the Friendship Centre in the Bangladeshi town of Gaibandha.[1], [2]

Completed in 2011 after design work between 2008 and 2010, the centre provides training and meeting rooms for underserved communities in the rural Jamuna River delta. The area faces floods and earthquakes. The building includes classrooms, offices, a library, meditation spaces, dormitories and dining facilities.[1]

An earthen barrier protects the brick complex

The soft ground cannot bear heavy loads, so the design uses a compacted earthen embankment for flood protection instead of elevated foundations. Local workers built the centre largely by hand with locally made clay bricks. Planted roofs, open courtyards and linked rainwater collection pools help moderate temperatures and provide natural ventilation. Nearby monastery ruins at Mahasthangarh partly inspired its form.[1]

The award also funds tree planting in Argentina

The award totals 200,000 dollars, split equally between the architect and tree planting in the commissioning client’s honour. Fundación Gran Chaco, a nonprofit in Formosa, Argentina, receives the planting allocation for the Gran Chaco forest. It honours Friendship, the organisation that commissioned the centre. The prize considers projects completed worldwide over the past three decades; nearly 140 projects entered the inaugural selection.[1]

References

  1. News sourceARTnewsFriendship Centre in Bangladesh wins inaugural Ambasz-MoMA Prize↩1↩2↩3↩4
  2. News sourceMoMAMoMA names Friendship Centre as its first Ambasz Prize winner↩

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