A Baroque Urbanism

Telling stories with buildings in Dhaka and Karachi

- CHRIS MOFFAT

KARACHI AND DHAKA SHARE THE DUBIOUS HONOUR of being failed capitals of Pakistan. Karachi served briefly as the seat of government for the newly created state, formed out of the 1947 partition of British India. In 1959, its crowded streets and seaside air were traded for green and mountainous scenery, a construction site near Rawalpindi, and the promise of straight and clean lines in the purpose-built Islamabad. Dhaka, meanwhile, was designated Pakistan’s “second capital” in 1962, as President Mohammad Ayub Khan sought to placate tensions in what was then the country’s eastern wing. Locating legislative power in East Bengal, two thousand kilometres from Islamabad, did little to stem a rising tide. In less than a decade, following a bloody liberation war, Dhaka would become the primary capital of a new country: Bangladesh.