To sustain humanity, a minimum contact with the natural world is required. In our current context of Dhaka, such considerations are not properly being made due to lack of awareness in the aspects of impact of their decision to create dense residential areas with little or no available space for green. This current trend of creating dense residential areas have given rise to depression, anxiety, typhoid, jaundice and other psychological and physical problems that commonly did not exist before.

For this reason, I have decided to do my thesis on housing in one our most dense residential area, Bashundara. My main focus was on creating an integrated communal space to bring about interaction among the residence and neighbouring inhabitants of that area. There are seven residential towers, all placed in such a way to receive enough natural light and ventilation to promote a healthy environment inside.
The ground floor is mainly parking replaced with basic amenities under some building such as confectionary, stationary, laundry, tailors, etc. The parking and amenities is carefully landscaped and integrated with the green communal space for all.

The main focus of the communal space is the large water body adjoining all the buildings. Water body like this plays a major role in our rural lifestyle. Not only is it used for bathing, laundry, etc, it is where at the end of the day people relax and gossiping about their days work. Water bodies play a vital role in the psychology of our rural people. It brings people together, helps resolve their personal and family problems among their family members, and where people can let out of their anxiety and stress after a long days work. The air around the water bodies are cooler bringing more soothing and relaxing mood in peoples minds. Keeping that in perspective, in urban context, waterbodies surrounded by jogging tracks and sitting areas with large foliage trees, creates a perfect place to promote health and welfare of the local residents. It is where residents can find a space of their own, let out their minds from the fast lives, and promotes their health through exercise, jogging, power walking etc; children can play, gossip and integrate with other local children to become a complete social human being and promote communication and social problem solving skills and discourage depression, living alone, anxiety, suicide, etc. It discourages people to live indoors and share an outdoor life with their neighbourhood.

For this reason, I have decided to do this housing project as an experimental project of how housing can be in the immediate future for the wellbeing of our future generation.

2010

2010