Understanding Context.Reimagining Futures.
An architectural and urban design philosophy exploring the relationships between people, place, history, culture, ecology, and the built environment.
0.1 Start Here
The platform is organised in six sections, from the philosophy to the people who develop it. Five ways in, for a first visit:
0.2 Introduction and Core Proposition
Every place is shaped by visible and invisible forces. Histories, social relationships, cultural practices, ecological processes, political structures, and everyday life contribute to the meaning of the built environment.
New Contextualism approaches architecture and urbanism through these interconnected conditions, seeking a deeper understanding of place and the possibilities for meaningful transformation.
Editorial summary Awaiting the founder’s approval
‘Context, in the New Contextualist framework, transcends the immediate physical site.’
0.3 Key Ideas
Each idea is summarised by the editors and quoted from the founder’s published writing.
Editorial summary Awaiting the founder’s approval
‘transcends the immediate physical site’
Context includes social, cultural, ecological and political conditions, not only the surrounding buildings.
‘a tenfold overlapping analysis’
Places are read through ten layers at once, weighted differently in each project.
‘intrinsically forward-looking, yet profoundly anchored in an understanding of the past’
History is the basis for anticipating the needs a building will meet.
‘critical adaptation to the specificities of the local’
Global knowledge is welcomed, but filtered through local climate, materials and culture.
‘process-based rather than style-based’
What is new lies in a way of reading and weighing context, not in a recognisable form.
‘must protect the “right to the city”’
No project should strip away people’s access to space, belonging or shared resources.
0.4 The Ten Contextual Layers
The founder’s writing describes context as a ‘tenfold matrix’ of overlapping layers. None is read alone: each is entangled with the others, and every project weighs them differently.
Layers and their terms from Reza 2025, where they are called dimensions. The relations traced here are an editorial interpretation.
0.5 Explore the Philosophy
What New Contextualism is, where it came from, and how it understands context. Ten parts, each drawn from the published record.
0.6 Explore the Methodologies and Frameworks
New Contextualism is presented as a process before it is a form. Every project is said to begin with three phases, with particular weight on the first (Reza and Nitu 2025).
Investigating context through the ten layers: the phase given particular weight.
Translating what is found into strategy.
Developing, testing and refining the response.
0.7 Featured Projects and Case Studies
Theses, studio projects and competition entries in which the framework has been applied, documented from published sources. The drawings that accompany them are abstract editorial plates, not drawings of the projects.
No built works have yet been documented on this platform.
Conceptual proposalUndergraduate thesis
Panatirtha, Jadukata riverfront, Sunamganj, Bangladesh · 2023
Reimagines a riverside pilgrimage site, traditionally visited once a year for ritual bathing, as a civic landscape alive in daily life as well as in ritual moments.
Conceptual proposalUndergraduate thesis
Kallyanpur canal, Dhaka, Bangladesh · Documented 2025
Frames a neglected urban canal as a civic spine, combining flood management, community access and boat transit within a transit-oriented development.
Conceptual proposalThesis and studio project
Chawk Bazar, Old Dhaka, Bangladesh · Documented 2023
Reimagines Old Dhaka’s historic Chawk Bazar as a layered spatial narrative, merging memory, commerce and community.
Conceptual proposalInternational competition entry
Gateway of India precinct, Mumbai, India · 2024
A competition entry reimagining the Gateway of India precinct as a civic sanctuary, anchored by a sunken memorial cube and two symbolic axes.
0.8 Latest Research and Publications
Essays, articles, lectures and reports that make up the published record of New Contextualism, alongside the founder’s research on the history of Bengal. Every record has a persistent address and a full citation.
22 records · 7 types · 2008–2026
Mohammad Habib Reza The Daily Star
Mohammad Habib Reza The Daily Star
Mohammad Habib Reza, Athena Rahman Esempi di Architettura
Mohammad Habib Reza, Upama Das Nitu Context BD
Mohammad Habib Reza The Daily Star
0.9 Join the Community
New Contextualism has developed through design studios, workshops, lectures and symposia, and through exchange between practice and academia.
This platform is intended as a place for that dialogue to continue, across disciplines and between local conditions and wider systems. It is not a membership organisation; the ways to take part are set out below.
Proposed statement Awaiting the founder’s approval
