Darbar Hall

Darbar Hall
Convention Hall · Mymensingh, Bangladesh

Convention halls in Bangladesh's secondary cities face a common problem of structure. The column grids that hold up the floors above are placed without regard for the gathering spaces below, and the result is a room interrupted before it can begin. At Darbar Hall in Mymensingh, 23/90 Architects encountered two such columns planted at the centre of the principal dining floor, and resolved them not by concealment in the ordinary sense but by a precise act of visual logic.

Each column is wrapped in staggered mirror panels set at calculated angles. As one moves through the hall, the mirrors capture and return the surrounding space, the floor, the ceiling, the tables and the other guests, fragmenting and reassembling the room's image in a way that makes the structural elements visually dissolve. The columns do not disappear exactly, but they cease to read as solid interruptions and become instead part of the room's spatial movement.

The ceiling is the hall's other primary achievement. Particle board, a material more commonly found in flat-pack furniture than in the suspended surfaces of public interiors, is here cut, curved, and layered into a continuous undulating form that runs the full length of the space. Its surface rises and falls in soft wave-like sections that fold downward at their edges. LED cove lighting is embedded within these folds, throwing warm amber light upward into the curves and cool white light downward into the room below. The choice of material is not incidental; it is a demonstration that spatial ambition does not require expensive specification, only considered craft.

The floor is a two-toned checkerboard of polished marble, its alternating squares extending the length of the hall and giving the long dining arrangement an axial clarity. White walls and white structural elements keep the palette neutral, allowing the ceiling light and the mirror columns to carry all the atmospheric work.

Darbar Hall demonstrates that the constraints of a conventional programme, fixed column positions, large undifferentiated floor area, and the logistical demands of banquet dining, are not obstacles to spatial ambition but the precise terms within which it must be exercised.