School
Expertise
Bio
Adnan Zillur Morshed is an architect, architectural historian and critic, urban theorist, and tenured professor at the School of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He received his PhD and master’s degree in architecture from MIT and his Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), where he also taught before moving to the United States. He has served as the founder-director of the Centre for Inclusive Architecture and Urbanism (Ci+AU) at BRAC University (Dhaka, Bangladesh) and as a Fulbright Specialist (2021–2025).
Morshed’s diverse research interests include global histories of architecture and urbanism, spatial justice, urban poverty, water historiography in architecture, ecological urbanism in developing countries, and early twentieth-century American urban culture. He has lectured on these subjects at institutions worldwide. He is the author of several books, including Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder (University of Minnesota Press, 2015); DAC: Dhaka in Twenty-Five Buildings (Altrim Publishers, 2017); Dhaka Delirium (Altrim Publishers, 2023); Spatial (In)Justice: How Does It Manifest in the Built Environment? (ed., Wiley, 2026), and Shamsul Wares: An Architecture of Elemental Modernism (ed., ORO Editions, 2026). His current book project, Urban Poverty and the Politics of Spatiality, explores how urban poverty since the Industrial Revolution has shaped diverse spatial practices and imaginations. Morshed’s articles have appeared in leading academic and professional journals, including Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Journal of Architectural Education, South Asian Studies, Thresholds (MIT), Constructs (Yale), New Geographies (Harvard), Architectural Design, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, and Water History.
Morshed was featured in the acclaimed documentary Louis Kahn’s Tiger City (2019) and has served as a TEDx speaker, Wyeth Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), Verville Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, and the Wolfsonian Fellow at the Wolfsonian–Florida International University. He has held numerous professional and academic service roles, including serving on the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), MIT’s Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative, and the editorial boards of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and the International Journal of Islamic Architecture. He has chaired SAH’s book and exhibition award committees and served as a juror for National Endowment for the Humanities (USA) grants. His research has been supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, MIT, the University of Liverpool, The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, the United Nations Development Programme, and BRAC University.
As a practicing architect, his work includes eight BRAC field offices across Bangladesh, a farmhouse in North Carolina, several community mosques, institutional buildings, and private residences. In 2023, he curated the exhibition Architecture as Freedom, based on his team’s BRAC work, at the AIA District Architecture Center in Washington, DC.
Publications
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Designing Spaces for Global Citizens
Designing Spaces for Global Citizens | Adnan Morshed | TEDxFoggyBottom
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Impossible Heights
Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder. (University of Minnesota Press, 2015).
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Oculus
Oculus: A Decade of Insights into Bangladesh Affairs. (Dhaka, Bangladesh: University Press Limited, 2012).
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DAC, Dhaka: An Architectural Guidebook
DAC, Dhaka: An Architectural Guidebook. (Altrim Publishers, Barcelona, Dec. 2017).
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