Architecture News Plus (ANP) – Architecture and Design Magazine

South Water Garden

This is a project by Shatotto and it is located at Baridhara, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Project's program: Apartment building. There are fifteen images for South Water Garden.

: © Daniele Domenicali

Project details

Project name: South Water Garden
Location: Baridhara, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Program: Apartment building
Area: Built Area: 33,600 sf
Year: Completion: 2007
More details: Project Cost: US$ 576,000
Client: South Breeze Housing
Project by: Shatotto
Team: Principal Architect: Rafiq Azam • Project Architect: Shakir
Others: Structural Engineer: Asaduzzaman • Mechanical Design: Kabir • Electrical Engineer: Zahiruddin • Landscape Design: Shatotto & Shakh Enterprise

Project images

Designer's statement

Dhaka, a five hundred square miles city having less than five percent green area with inconsistent and unreliable infrastructure along with other persistent difficulties made this city an urban mayhem. This “South Water Garden” apartment building though located at United Nations Road, Baridhara diplomatic zone is not much an exception in terms of green. But this particular site having a lake and a narrow strip of green patch on the back side (west) of the plot is a fortune.

The deal between the landowner and developer was to divide the seven thousand five hundred square feet plot in equal two pieces to construct two six storied buildings of two thousand eight hundred square feet floor area each in order to share equally.

In fact utilizing seventy five percent of the plot area as per rule was a strong requirement from the clients put the design into a challenge in terms of creating open green space. The design suggestion here was to take forty square feet of small area from both the parties as good gesture, placing along with eight feet gap of two buildings and five feet road set back as per rule in order to create a two hundred square feet of only green patch in front of the building on the east road. This arrangement also accompanying with no boundary wall notion and little benches is a token of respect for the passer by and community living around.

Basically these two buildings developed almost similarly consisted of five apartments on ground floor as parking area. In plan, the simple interior with required functional arrangements is connecting the beautiful lake and large trees on the west, allowing the south east summer breeze to go through the entire house with ample light round the day. The use of exposed as cast structural beam and column exterior with terracotta brick in fill is also a simple approach friendly to the subtropical climate of Dhaka.

The scheme also developed the two roof tops of the buildings as community green with lawns and bushes around a small pavilion as a transformed subtropical architectural vocabulary addressing the concern of “shortage of green space” in city.