Over three decades, Dhaka-based architecture firm Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA has produced an astonishing collection of works of divergent scales, typologies, and contexts located in one of the most meteorologically challenging regions in the world. A hospital introduced into an economy decimated by rising oceans, a shelter against cyclones in Bangladeshs southern coastal region, and architectural interventions in one of the worlds densest metropolitan areas: Kashef Chowdhury / URBANAs designs are incisive, critical responses to varied issues and urgencies rooted in the belief that architecture must be a reflection of, and sympathetic to, increasingly fragile ecological conditions. Meditations in Entropy is the first comprehensive book on the work of Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA. It features 16 of the firms designs in detail through photographs by acclaimed architectural photographer Hélène Binet as well as numerous plans, drawings, sketches, and other images. Perceptive essays are contributed by eminent critics and historians, Kenneth Frampton, Robert McCarter, and William J.R. Curtis. A conversation between Chowdhury, Swiss architect Niklaus Graber, and distinguished architectural historian Philip Ursprung, further analyzing URBANAs unique approach, rounds off this volume.

Kashef Chowdhury ist Architekt, Architekturvermittler und Fotograf. Er führt in Dhaka das Büro Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA, das seit 1995 ein international viel beachtetes und preisgekröntes Werk geschaffen hat. William J.R. Curtis ist ein international angesehener Historiker, Autor und Kritiker mit Spezialisierung auf die Architektur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Kenneth Frampton ist Ware Professor of Architecture an der Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation der Columbia University in New York. Robert McCarter ist Architect und Autor und lehrt als Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture an der Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts der Washington University in St. Louis. Philip Ursprung lehrt als Professor für Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte am Institut gta der ETH Zürich.