A training center in the Brahmaputra-Jamuna delta, built from local brick and protected from floods by a compacted-earth embankment, is the first project selected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the Ambasz-MoMA Annual Prize for Nature-Reconciled Architecture. The award goes to Kashef Chowdhury, founder of the Dhaka-based firm URBANA, for the Friendship Centre in Gaibandha, completed in 2011.
The prize spotlights a project far removed from the usual geographies of major international architecture, drawing attention back to an increasingly tangible issue for cities and regions exposed to the climate crisis: how to construct durable buildings where water is a recurring condition, the ground provides limited load-bearing capacity, and energy-intensive systems are expensive or difficult to maintain.
The total value of the initiative is 200,000 dollars. One hundred thousand will go to Chowdhury; the other one hundred thousand will be awarded to Fundación Gran Chaco, a non-profit organization based in Formosa, Argentina, for tree-planting efforts in the Gran Chaco forest. The environmental allocation of the second half of the prize was designated in honor of Friendship, the Bangladeshi NGO that commissioned the center.
A building designed for a flood-prone delta
The Friendship Centre serves as the operational base for an organization fighting poverty in an area largely populated by agricultural workers. It houses offices, classrooms, a library, meditation spaces, dormitories, and dining services. Its function, however, does not alone explain the project's significance: it is the conditions of the site that defined its character.
Gaibandha is located in a region vulnerable to flooding. To avoid deep and costly foundations, ill-suited to a modest budget and weak soil, URBANA laid out the complex on an embankment built from compacted earth. Within it, the architecture is distributed across two quadrangular structures connected by courtyards, walkways, arches, and pools. The result does not seek a monumental footprint in the surrounding rural landscape: the built mass remains low-lying and articulated, absorbed by vegetation and the artificial topography of the embankment.
The choice of brick is not a superficial nod to tradition. The cladding uses handmade bricks produced by the community, a solution consistent with locally available materials and skills. The environmental strategy also relies on simple elements: green roofs, open courtyards, and a series of rainwater harvesting pools help mitigate temperatures and promote natural ventilation. The centre can therefore limit its reliance on mechanical air conditioning, which in a rural context can represent both an upfront cost and an ongoing operational dependency.
Chowdhury linked the project to the nearby ruins of Mahasthan, a settlement dating back to the third century BC from which the inspiration for water management is drawn. It is a reference that helps interpret the work beyond contemporary language: not an imitation of historical forms, but the recovery of deep-seated territorial knowledge adapted to current social needs.
The significance of MoMA’s new award
The Ambasz-MoMA Annual Prize for Nature-Reconciled Architecture was introduced by the museum in April 2026 thanks to the Legacy Emilio Ambasz Foundation. The program looks at works completed over the last thirty years that address the relationship between the built environment and the natural environment. Nearly 140 international submissions were reviewed for this inaugural edition.
The jury comprised Evangelos Kotsioris, director of the Ambasz Institute at MoMA, and museum curators Martino Stierli and Paula Vilaplana de Miguel, alongside Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects and Wang Shu of Amateur Architecture Studio. The selection of the Friendship Centre thus brings museum and professional recognition to a building operating outside the circuits of global metropolises, without separating technical considerations from the social responsibilities of those who use it.
The center has been in service for fourteen years. This detail is important because it detaches assessment from the mere power of images and design novelty. The passive cooling solutions, flood response, and relationship with the landscape are backed by more than a decade of daily use. This does not mean the model can be transferred unchanged to any city: climate, construction techniques, land availability, and community organization vary from one region to another. But it does indicate that low-resource architecture does not necessarily equate to a temporary solution or an aesthetic of sacrifice.
A useful lesson even outside Bangladesh
For the European urban debate, often focused on high-tech materials, certifications, and systems retrofits, Gaibandha offers a different scale of observation. The building's efficiency stems first and foremost from its layout: orientation, shade, water, thermal inertia, courtyards, and ventilation. These are decisions that address energy demand before compensating for it with technical equipment.
This approach neither eliminates the need for industrial innovation nor solves complex issues such as delta adaptation, water security, or rural poverty with a single project. It also requires maintenance, water management, and construction expertise—conditions that cannot be taken for granted. Rather, the merit of the Friendship Centre lies in having made these constraints legible and transforming them into the backbone of the collective space.
MoMA's decision comes as the construction sector is called upon to reduce emissions and vulnerabilities, yet must do so across contexts that vary widely in terms of income, energy grids, and climate risk. Recognizing URBANA means acknowledging that the repertoire relevant to the contemporary city does not originate solely in the laboratories of the wealthiest markets. It can emerge from a floodplain, from the supply chain of a handmade brick, and from the necessity of continuing to use a building during extreme seasons.
For Chowdhury and URBANA, the award brings international visibility; for MoMA's new program, however, it sets a clear precedent. Upcoming selections will reveal whether this focus on locally rooted works, capable of combining public use with essential ecological infrastructure, will become a permanent criterion or remain an inaugural exception. Meanwhile, in Gaibandha, the recognition does not alter the primary function of the Friendship Centre: remaining a space for training and gathering for the community that uses it.
