Kahn can be considered one of the few architects of the 20th century to have come to terms with the problem of defining an authentic, modern monumentality. His designs for sacred spaces of diverse religions (church, synagogue, mosque) combined the idea of assembly with a sense of the transcendent. Light was one of the keys in this suggestion of an invisible order. Through symbolic geometries Kahn evoked the origins of architecture and institutions. With buildings such as the National Assembly in Dhaka, Bangladesh (1976), the former East Pakistan, he interpreted the contradictions of representation in a post-colonial state and succeeded in fusing together Eastern and Western traditions.