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The mission was to train local architects, filling the void of architectural design expertise warranted by the burgeoning building industry, particularly during President Mohammad Ayub Khan's "Decade of Development" in Pakistan. Vrooman1 and his colleagues were supported by other expatriate architects including Daniel C Dunham (1962-67) and Jack R Yardley (1966-68), both of whom taught at the newly minted architecture programme in Dhaka.

Creating a new academic program was nothing short of a momentous achievement, especially against the backdrop of local and international politics that framed ground conditions in East Pakistan during the 1960s. First, Bengalis in East Pakistan were justifiably wary of West Pakistan's military junta (that took over power in 1958 and imposed martial law), viewed as reluctant to relinquish power to a majority-elected democratic government. The people of East Pakistan agitated for self-rule throughout the 1960s that ultimately led to the Liberation War of 1971. Second, during this period world politics were driven by Cold War era calculations in which superpowers sought to expand their spheres of influence.

Given Pakistan's geostrategic location, the United States adopted a foreign policy of forging alliance with Pakistan to resist the ideological expansion of the Soviet Union into South Asia. As part of this "make friends" policy, the US extended considerable assistance to the economic and educational development of Pakistan through its International Cooperation Administration (ICA, 1955-61).2

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The year 1966 was memorable for two reasons. The five-year programme produced the maiden batch of five graduates. Second, six Bengali students, who went to the USA to study architecture under the USAID-Texas A&M University Participant Program, returned to Dhaka to teach. This not only enlarged the pool of qualified teachers, but also paved the way for local teachers to assume leadership at the Department of Architecture. By 1968 all the expatriate teachers left, bequeathing the responsibility of the Department to local teachers. Shah Alam Zahiruddin, who received his architecture degree from the University of Florida, took over as the second Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning.

The construction of Vrooman's Architecture building began in 1964, more or less contemporaneously with Louis Kahn's Parliament building in Dhaka. Engineer Mohammed Saber Jafar, a graduate of Bengal Engineering and Science University at Shibpur, West Bengal (now Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology, Shibpur), served as local architect for the project.

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  • 1. No building symbolises the advent of professional architectural education in Bangladesh during the 1960s more appropriately than the Department of Architecture building, designed by Richard Edwin Vrooman (1920-2002), at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). An American architect and academic, "Dik" Vrooman took a leave of absence from his faculty position at the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University (Texas A&M University), spending 1961-68 in Dhaka to accomplish a lofty pedagogical mission. Other Texas A&M University professors who joined him included: James C Walden, Jr (1962-66) and Samuel T Lanford (1963-65). They were brought to Dhaka through a partnership between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Texas A&M University, aimed at creating an architecture department at the East Pakistan University of Engineering and Technology (EPUET; renamed as BUET after Bangladesh became an independent nation in 1971).
  • 2. In 1962, the Government of Pakistan decided to upgrade Dhaka's Ahsanullah Engineering College to a full-fledged university or EPUET. The need for creating an architecture department was urgently felt, particularly because there was a dearth of native architectural experts who could shoulder the task of designing various buildings alongside the handful of expatriate architects working in Pakistan. Vrooman rose to the occasion. Overcoming bureaucratic obstacles, he spearheaded the creation of an architecture programme that would flourish rapidly. He became the first dean of Architecture and designed its flagship building. By 1965,with four American teachers and 68 students at five levels, Architecture grew rapidly as an academic discipline in East Pakistan.