Name & Location: Friendship Centre, Gaibandha, Bangladesh

Cost of Project: (US$) 731,700 (including cost of land)

Built-up area: 2,897 sqm
(In case of Public Building, minimum built-up area should be 1000 sq. meter)

Description of Project:

The Friendship Centre is located near the district town of Gaibandha in Bangladesh, in a low-lying land which is under threat of flooding. An extensive program with a very limited fund meant that raising the structures above flood level (a height of eight feet) was not an option: nearly the entire available fund would be lost below grade. The design relies on a mini-embankment for flood protection while building directly on existing soil, in load-bearing masonry. Rainwater and surface run-off are collected in internal pools and the excess is pumped to an excavated pond, also to be used for fishery. The design relies on natural ventilation and cooling, being facilitated by courtyards and pools and the earth covering on roofs. An extensive network of septic tanks and soak wells ensure the sewage does not mix with flood water.

The Centre serves and brings together some of the poorest of poor in the country and—by extension—in the world, yet in the extreme limitation of means was a search for the luxury of light and shadows; of the economy and generosity of small spaces; of the joy of movement and discovery in the bare and the essential.

Materials of Construction Details:

From the very beginning, design inspiration and precedence came from the ruins of Buddhist monasteries and settlements in the region, dating back to the 3rd century BC and not more than seventy kilometers from the site. These structures were entirely in brick and it was inspiring to refer and use a material which has been in continuous use in the area for more than two thousand years.

The culture of brick construction is omnipresent in Bengal. Thousands of ruins and thousand-year-old mosques, temples and monasteries testify to this tradition. As the complex will be used by people from varied socio-economic backgrounds, including some of the poorest people in the country, the general acceptance of brick as a ‘common’ building material and the humbleness of the visual impact has delivered the Centre as ‘for the people’ and ‘of the soil’—thus gaining early acceptance and popularity in the area.

Only locally produced hand-made bricks were used. This was to encourage local manufacture and create additional jobs for local brick masons, assistants and labour generally associated with the brick industry.

Special Features:

The requirement for a training and meeting centre for the NGO Friendship was extensive albeit to be constructed at a near-impossible low budget. Secondly, as participants for conferences and training would be staying and working at the complex for up to a week at a stretch, it was important to have sufficient open, gathering spaces for people to move about. It was also estimated that the operational budget for the complex would be similarly low and therefore it was important to keep materials and surfaces as maintenance-free as possible as well as to adapt natural ventilation and other means to keep running costs low, even in hot summers.

Although the area experiences very hot summers, it was possible to avoid the use of air-conditioning by careful placement of windows, courtyards and shafts to ensure cross ventilation and air draughts using stack effect and mini-tunnel effect. This was aided by the introduction of pools of water, which themselves helped at micro-climatic levels by localized cooling. The use of natural stone flooring keeps the interiors cool, again aided by the extra thermal mass in the form of earth and green covering on roofs.