Enamul Karim Nirjhar

Nirjhar's journey as an architect along with film making and song making is culminating towards creating a collaborative platform EK NIJHAR COLLABORATIONS which will be aimed towards the creative and intellectual empowerment of a young creative. These initiatives will pave the way towards the creation of a process where film making and song making will go on along with the architecture practice and will create a strong foothold for the future creative collaborative initiatives. The first step towards that EK NIRJHARer GAAN, the collaborative music initiative with artists from West Bengal and Bangladesh is currently going on from the music platform Gaanshala. It hopes to become the biggest music community in south-east Asia. With the thoughts of this initiative `SYSTEM architects India’ started its journey in Mumbai and 9 STEPS is currently collaborating on different film projects.

Nirjhar's second film, Nomuna (2009), was a dystopian social satire about political turmoil. Apart from directing, he also wrote the story, script, and songs for the film. The eight-song soundtrack was released in September 2009, but the Bangladesh Film Censor Board refused to issue the film a censor certificate.

Besides regular architecture practice Nirjhar is one of the most prominent filmmakers of Bangladesh. His filmography includes two full-length feature films AHA (2007), NOMUNA (2009) along with a few documentaries SHADOW GAP, TINI-The Architect etc. As the founder of 9 STEPS currently he is trying to develop a self-dependent group of creative, technical, commercial professionals who will contribute to future film and media industry with a collective vision. In the process he is proceeding with multiple film projects with a young generation of film enthusiasts.

In 2003, Nirjhar designed the Head Office Complex of British American Tobacco Dhaka. For which he was awarded with the AYA JK cement ARCHITECT OF THE YEAR award in 2005. In 2013 he designed conceptual commercial neighborhood titled ‘nina KABBO’ where the poems of 12 prominent poets of Bangla literature was used on different faced of the building for the first time in Bangladesh. He was awarded `BERGER AWARD OF EXCELLENCE IN ARCHITECTURE’ for the design of the building.

Nirjhar started his film career directing short documentary films on social issues including The Shadow Gap (2003), Tini (The Architect) (2005), and Manush, Koyta, Asche (2006). He released two feature films - Aha! (2007) and Nomuna (2009). The film Aha! won Bangladesh National Film Awards in four categories. It was Bangladesh's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007, but was not nominated.

From an early period, Nirjhar was very much involved in photography as another of his passions. He participated in several exhibitions with his photography works. Bornodhara (2001), a book of his photography and poetry, was a tribute to the Bangla alphabet and language.

In 1995 Ek Nirjhar formed SYSTEM architects. From the very beginning he was involved in the process of designing every little detail of all the projects. From mid 90s to 2005 he designed a number of popular restaurants. In 2000 he designed the first ever theatre restaurant in Bangladesh called Asparagus where fine dining combined with live performances was quite a new experience for the food lovers of the city. In 2005 he designed the first horror themed restaurant named VOOT (‘Ghost’ in English) in Dhaka with his regular collaborators. Other restaurants he designed includes White Castle, Bukhara, Santoor, Hotel Agrabad, We in Dhaka, Chittagong and UK where he tried to put his social observations in the form of profiling and performance. Integration of our culture and heritage, empowerment of the craftsmen along with combining other art forms with the design was a key aspect in his design to give a combined thematic restaurant experience.

Nirjhar joined the popular humor magazine Unmad and in the mid-1980s became a contributor to the weekly Sachitra Shandhani. He was the initiator of an experimental magazine on cinema named Kino Eye and literary magazine Potito Shubash. He has also written three books of stories: Kanush (2010), Jaa (2012), and Oboshesh Ongshobishesh.

Nirjhar was born to Muhammad Afsar Ali and Momtaz Begum in Rajshahi. In the mid-1970s, he was admitted to Rajshahi Cadet College. He studied architecture From Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).

Enamul Karim Nirjhar (born 29 November 1962) is a Bangladeshi architect and filmmaker. His parallel effort towards different interests along with architecture is coming in a shape of a collaborative platform day by day- EK NIRJHAR COLLABORATIONS.