Adnan Z. Morshed

Adnan Z. Morshed is an architect, architectural historian and theorist, urbanist, and professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He also serves as executive director of the Centre for Inclusive Architecture and Urbanism at BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and as a Fulbright specialist (2021-2025). He was featured in Sundaram Tagore’s acclaimed documentary Louis Kahn’s Tiger City (2019).

Morshed received his PhD and Master’s degree in history, theory, and criticism from MIT. He has been a TEDx speaker at George Washington University; a Wyeth fellow at CASVA  at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and a Verville fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. He is the author of multiple books, including Dhaka Delirium (Altrim Publishers, 2022) and Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). His articles have appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of South Asian Studies, Thresholds, Constructs, New Geographies, Architectural Design, and Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review. A practicing architect, Morshed has most recently design work eight regional offices for BRAC across rural Bangladesh, and a farmhouse in North Carolina. In 2023, he curated “Architecture as Freedom” at the District Architecture Center in Washington, D.C. The exhibition highlighted the challenges of spatializing social justice and equity in the built environment.