The largest Somapura Mahaviha of Bangladesh

The same intrinsic, palpable, and uplifting resonance can be found while climbing the plinths of the majestic Somapura Mahavihara. Buddhist monastery in the northern Naogaon district of Bangladesh. vihara in the Subcontinent and a World Heritage Site, this eighth-century structure still manifests the Sanskrit and Pali notion of ‘a secluded place in which to walk’. A place of pilgrimage, it owes its careful proportions to the cosmic order of the mandala, and its four-faced Sarvatobhadra-type shrine forms the centerpiece of the entire complex. Azam’s work is unique in that it strives to attain this elusive spiritual quality, and originates from an urban and environmental context that is surely like no other on earth. His exquisitely simple and personal applications of nature’s own logic and poetry showcase what is creatively liberating and logically possible outside the usual parameters of mainstream thinking.