Mr. Sultan & Son’s Apartment Principal Architect: Salauddin Ahmed Size: M. Sultan & Sons Paints shop is located in thick of urban Dhaka. The district is known for its commercial status from its inception. It bares the evidence of early settlement of foreign traders along with the locals. The name of the district, Nawabpur, which means, the locality of the Nawabs, the then rulers, the great Moguls of Delhi, India. The tightly Netted settlements of narrow buildings, two to four stories for the most part, with labyrinth like back allies, stitches the figure and the foreground, like an unsolvable jigsaw puzzle. To be lost in the mist of building is only normal for an outsider. At a glance, it appears that there is no language to express this setting. The superimposition of changes Over the years makes it extremely difficult to find an imbedded history and a language to read the buildings as a type. The dissimilarity from one layer of history to the next is evident in the built environment. Yet, there is a lucid conversation between the buildings. Their agreements to be together are not of codes or of rules, rather a mummer sound of negotiations and adjustments. They appear and disappear from nowhere and everywhere. They overlap, fold, twist, turn and rub against each other. They do follow a norm but this is not of civility but of existence. Almost a game in the surrealist's painting or the survival of the fittest in the theory of evolution. As an architect, I have chosen to construct a building and its architecture to magnify and capture these moments of ruptures. The energy of the surrounding and the weight of its physicality, bear marks through punches and lines on the surfaces that I have proposed. My work examines the built and the unbuilt. It frames and is framed with honesty of materials and in the process of its becoming, it participates and disengages with the given. Stripped of any color and cover, it attempts to speak of material, construction, and its time in space.