Hatirjheel's global honour is a reminder that it is still important
Thirteen years after transforming a polluted canal into one of Dhaka’s most ambitious public spaces, Hatirjheel has earned yet another international acclaim — alongside renewed questions about the city’s failure to replicate or care for such projects
Asian Townscape Awards 2025's recognition of the Hatirjheel Integrated Development Project in the "Lake and Reservoir Development" category on 27 November in Hong Kong is more than an accolade, it is a reminder.
In a city where architectural ambition routinely clashes with unplanned growth, Hatirjheel stands as one of Dhaka's rare urban interventions that genuinely reshaped public life, mobility, and ecological memory.
Yet almost 13 years since its opening, does Hatirjheel still hold architectural relevance? The answer, urban planners argue, lies in understanding what the project was trying to repair in the first place.
Before redevelopment, Hatirjheel was an environmental cautionary tale — black water, encroached banks, and untreated waste. Today, despite ongoing challenges, it remains proof of possibility: that dysfunctional urban waterbodies can be revived through coordinated design.
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When we asked architect Iqbal Habib, the team leader of the project, he said, "I am more worried than happy to get the award. It has been more than a decade since this one, which means we have not been able to implement a similar or better waterland development project in the past decade."
"Hatirjheel showed that Dhaka doesn't have to surrender its water heritage," Habib has argued. "If we restore our dead canals and lakes, the city can breathe again."
However, unauthorised stalls, food courts, and a lack of traffic and waste management now hover over the lake. The 300-acre waterbody was designed to retain rainwater flowing down from adjacent areas, but the project failed to do that. The lake has ended up becoming a septic tank as sewage lines have been connected to it. Pollution and the overwhelming stench are driving commuters away
Then why did it receive the Asian Townscape 2025 Award?
"It is not just a recognition of past achievement but a call to scale the model. It's time we take our waterlands seriously because the world is watching," Iqbal Habib said.
Out of 72 submissions from across Asia, 11 projects from seven countries and regions were selected for the Asian Townscape Awards (ATA) 2025. Among the five award categories, Bangladesh and India each secured one award. Dhaka received the Asian Townscape Award 2025 in the "Lake and Water Body Development" category for the Hatirjheel Integrated Development Project.
This marks a significant milestone for Bangladesh: although the country previously earned three Jurors Awards, this is the first time Dhaka has been recognised as a city for its lake and lakeside area development. The ATA honoured the project's architectural and landscape design, crediting VITTI Sthapati Brindo Ltd., represented at the ceremony by Architect Iqbal Habib and Architect Istiaque Zahir. The client agency RAJUK was represented by its Chairman Rezaul Islam.
The Asian Townscape Awards are organised by UN-Habitat, Asian Habitat Society, Urban Regeneration Center (URC), Asian Townscape Design Society (ATDES), and KLO. This year's award ceremony was hosted in Hong Kong on 27 November 2025.
A wetland reclaimed, not created
Formally titled Integrated Development of Hatirjheel Area Including Begunbari Khal, the project was conceived not as beautification but as a wetland restoration initiative. It sought to revive the water-edge character that once anchored Dhaka's early settlements along the Buriganga and its network of canals.
"This was never a cosmetic project," architect Iqbal Habib noted. "Our intention was to return water to the city's urban imagination. We believe that Dhaka, formed on the bank of a river and criss-crossed with lakes and waterlands, can have a fantastic water transport network."
Spread across 311 acres, Hatirjheel was designed as a retention basin capable of absorbing stormwater from surrounding neighbourhoods—an engineering response to an increasingly flood-prone capital. At the same time, it created a rare, continuous open-water surface inside a city starved of breathing space.
The project's realisation took almost six years, from 2008 to 2013, shaped by community pressure, legal battles, environmental activism, and negotiations with government agencies.
"The public made Hatirjheel possible," Habib has said. "It was an urban movement long before it became an engineering project."
This social momentum explains why Hatirjheel became symbolic: a rare case where people demanded the restoration of a wetland instead of its conversion into real estate.
How the project is designed
Hatirjheel's architecture lies not in isolated structures but in its integration of water, movement, and public space — a hybrid urban typology Dhaka had never experimented with at this scale.
Bridges and overpasses as urban sculpture
The project introduced four major and four minor bridges, along with a sequence of overpasses and pedestrian flyovers. Their arched profiles and careful proportions create a distinctive skyline around the waterbody.
Habib once described these elements as "functional sculptures," noting, "Every bridge had to solve a mobility problem, but it also had to create a sense of place. Dhaka lacks civic landmarks — Hatirjheel could not afford to be anonymous."
A waterfront circulation loop
A 16-kilometre loop road encircles the waterbody, connecting Tejgaon, Gulshan, Moghbazar, and Rampura. Below and beside these roads are 8.8 km of footpaths, 9.8 km of promenade, seating decks, boardwalk-like stretches, and landscaped edges.
This multi-level circulation pattern — vehicles above or beside, pedestrians at the water's edge — remains one of the most sophisticated spatial strategies ever executed in Dhaka.
Reclaimed waterways and public amenities
The project rebuilt the canal network, introduced water-taxi routes, added circular bus bays and parking pockets, and integrated recreational infrastructure including:
- a 2,000-seat amphitheatre
- viewing decks
- children's zones
- a 120-metre musical fountain
These elements collectively anchor Hatirjheel not just as infrastructure or a landscape project, but as civic architecture.
Why the project still matters in urban architecture
In a city losing its canals to land-grabbers and concrete, Hatirjheel is a reminder that water can be a structuring element — not a problem to be filled in.
Spread across 311 acres, Hatirjheel was designed as a retention basin capable of absorbing stormwater from surrounding neighbourhoods — an engineering response to an increasingly flood-prone capital. At the same time, it created a rare, continuous open-water surface inside a city starved of breathing space.
"We competed with projects from South Korea, Hong Kong and China, which are maintained properly. South Korea has a separate authority to maintain public places, which is a challenge we face in Bangladesh. Here we build beautiful structures, but due to a lack of maintenance they become inactive, invalid," architect Iqbal said.
Still, the project won. Why?
"Because it is not just a landscape project; it is restoring a waterland. Or, as the jurors said, 'it's a story of turning around'," he added.
Few projects in Bangladesh combine flood management, mobility, landscape, and public space so seamlessly. Hatirjheel created one of the most accessible public realms in Dhaka, serving people across class and district lines.
"However, the sad part is that we could not implement another canal-saving project in Dhaka city. A few years back we submitted a proposal to save the Kallayanpur canal, but nothing happened," Iqbal Habib said.
A landmark that needs care
The project's relevance does not erase its present-day problems — pollution, poor maintenance, odour, blocked drainage, potholes in the road network, and weak governance. For Habib, this has always been the core of his critique.
"A project like Hatirjheel has no finish line," he said in a 2022 panel. "Its success depends entirely on continuous care. Without management, even the best design will collapse."
The award, therefore, is both a celebration and a warning.
"Its restoration, international recognition, and lingering challenges all point to a single truth: Dhaka's future depends on whether it learns from Hatirjheel, not just admires it."
The project still matters — not because it is perfect, but because it remains a rare architectural vision powerful enough to reshape how we think about the city.
