Aniqa Nawar (1993) is a Bangladeshi architect and researcher, currently based in Belgium.
She is passionate about Streetscape, Collective spaces, Marginalised communities, and Queer space theory.
Aniqa completed her Bachelor (B.Arch) from BRAC University, Bangladesh with the BRAC Merit Based Scholarship in 2017, graduating with the highest distinction. Her Bachelors thesis was ‘Neighborhood nucleus protopia: accommodating spaces underneath the Tejgaon-Bijoy Sarani link road flyover’, where she designed a sequence of collective hybrid spaces on the street under the flyover, to stitch back the once well-knit two ‘paaras’ /communities. In 2022 She completed her Masters (M.Sc.) as Magna Cum Laude from KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture, Sint-Lucas Brussels and Ghent campus, with the Bangabandhu Science and Technology Fellowship. In her Master’s thesis ‘The House of Gregarious’ she proposed to create a series of super safe, highly tolerant series of queer collective spaces, in Christopher street, a highly gentrified neighborhood in West Village, Manhattan.
She has experience in practice in the field of architecture. These experiences also include working hands-on as an architect with marginalized communities in the south Asian context, namely Bangladesh (Sadek khan slum in Dhaka, traditional craftsmen community in Jhenidah), India (Laurie Baker Center), and Nepal (Earth-quake struck village of Kavre Pal Chawk).
Currently, she is researching queer collective spaces in Bangladesh under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Kris Scheerlinck (prom.) and Associate Prof. Dr. Mohammad Habib Reza (co-prom.).
Paper Publication: “Journey by Chitrangada of Tagore towards social acceptance: an accolade to gender discourse through Rituparno’s eyes”– Bangladesh Film Archive Journal (June 2018)