Description

Neighborhood-responsive design is a bridge to interaction between humans and the environment. In a dense metropolis like Dhaka, any opening on the exterior façades of a typical apartment interferes with the user's privacy. Besides, buildings developed in such a manner can rarely ensure adequate cross-ventilation or take advantage of natural lighting. In a quest to resolve these issues, the project, Charubithi adopts an indirect opening approach using the building's volumetric subtraction. In the design, the corners have been cut open so that the openings provide better privacy from the nearby buildings. The building volume has been split into two slender towers. The two towers are moved apart from each other to create a void space in the middle. The corners of the buildings have been subtracted from the volume to increase openings. In a dense urban setting, conventionally designed buildings cannot ensure adequate cross ventilation due to having limited aperture towards the south. By opening up the corners of the building, the surface area towards the south and the aperture between the two buildings is increased. Thus, better ventilation is ensured. Opening up the corners of two adjoining buildings creates interactive void spaces all around. If 4 adjacent buildings are designed with this principle, they create a large central void space with 8 additional pockets of void spaces along the outer edge. This concept of indirect openings by subtracting parts of the building volume was previously applied to two other projects: OHS Apartments and Kdin Tower. The accumulation of the learnings from all these previous projects was reflected in Charuta Charubithi.