HOMEmade by BASEhabitat: three model homes for Bangladesh

The most commonly used building materials in Bangladesh are traditional materials – rammed earth and bamboo – which are highly sustainable. This may sound fine, but in actual fact the resulting buildings often fail to meet their inhabitants’ need for comfort and privacy.

To avoid falling into the trap of “modern” houses made of brick, cement and corrugated metal sheeting, the BASEhabitat group from the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria worked with Bengali and Austrian architecture students and local craftspeople on three new models of single-family homes: buildings that stand out for their optimal energy balance, but also for their new approach to use of locally available resources.

In classic low rural constructions, the bathroom and kitchen are located in separate volumes, and the architects drew their inspiration from this to propose the same scheme, but dividing it up over two floors. This doubles the available living space, and the land thus “saved” can be used as a garden and source of nourishment. The space on the first floor with its veranda offers not only an amount of privacy that was unknown before, but the experience of looking down on the landscape from above.

The houses were built out of local construction materials such as rammed earth and bamboo, with a heat accumulator in the attic, coconut fibre insulation, glass windows and good cross-ventilation for an excellent indoor climate year-round, offering a model of a new way of living which is modern yet responsible.

Design: BASEhabitat and BRAC University Dhaka (concept + supervision: Anna Heringer, Khondaker Hasibul Kabir and Paul Tigga) http://www.basehabitat.org

Location: Rudarpur and Vishnupur, Bangladesh
Photographs: © B.K.S. Inan, © Katharina Doblinger
Related links: Iphiko, school near Johannesburg, http://www.floornature.com/blog/iphiko-andndash-an-environmentally-efficient-elementary-school-in-a-township-near-johannesburg-7454/