Louis Kahn's Bangladesh National Parliament (Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban) is the masterpiece in which modern architecture unites ancient monumentality with contemporary function under an intense tropical climate — Kahn's last work, laboured over throughout his life and completed after his death.

The building is a cluster of masses, octagonal in plan, rising in the middle of an artificial lake; the assembly chamber is at the centre, with offices, mosque, and circulation in a circular ring around it. The essence of Kahn's solution is the double skin: the building is two-layered, a thick concrete shell outside and the actual working spaces within. The reason the outer shell looks so dramatic is the giant geometric holes opened in it — full circles, triangles, curved slits. These openings are not decorative: they filter the scorching sun and monsoon of Bengal, breaking the harsh light in the intermediate corridors before it enters the working spaces directly. The outer shell is a sunbreaker and ventilation layer; the inner shell is the protected space.

Working the concrete mass in pure geometric figures (Platonic forms), Kahn gives the building a timeless, almost ancient weight; it stands as both brand new and a ruin thousands of years old. Giving a monumental gravity to the democratic institution of a developing country and a mind responsive to the local climate, the Bangladesh Parliament is one of the most powerful public buildings of 20th-century architecture and the summit of Kahn's idea of 'the structure that gives light'.