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Need Help: Apartment Complex design
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NEO
Tue Jul 11 2006, 07:43am Print
Admin Registered Member #4 Joined: Thu Aug 04 2005, 04:54am
: Dhaka
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mujtaba
Wed Jul 12 2006, 06:24pm
Registered Member #14 Joined: Tue Sep 20 2005, 08:54pm
: Honolulu, HI
Posts: 35
There are different ways of looking at apartment designs. The parking dosen't necessarily have to be tucked in under the building, though it is one very common option. Sometimes mulit-storied parking structues stand separately while buildings rise to 12~15 stories, this way a flexible grid system can be adopted. At the same time, and here's the best part, the residential zone can be kept private and pedestrian friendly, locating the whole vehicular zone outside. For high rise planning open pavement parking are also common.

Typically condominiums use one central-stairway-elevator-system plus peripheral fire exits served by corridors. Apartments in our country serve two-to-four units at each landing. which is centralized, rather than being linear.

2000 sft is a pretty lavish apartment. Currently such apartment holders ask for social symbols of status and class. Also ask for modern industrial amenities. The apartments also require animate forms of energy, which is served by low-cost maids or household helps (commonly calld servant or "bua" meaning sister), security at door ("darwans"), drivers and sometimes a garderner ("mali"). Even though the total community can be thought of as a combination of this lot, including the apartment owners, the "low-cost service personnel" are not considered in the design, except for the maid-servant.

Usually class inequality and social position are clearly made visible by the size of the maid's room, its location (adjacent to the kitchen) and the isolation and size of its bathroom. Traditionally affluent village homes used to have cow-sheds integrated in the house. But cows used to enjoy larger living areas, compared to size-use ratio than maids do in these "apartments". The horse carriages or palanquin of the nobility (zamindars) could be compared to the "drivers" practically playing the same role.

But nowadays, these are considered residential services (just like electricity and water) and not part of the community or responsiblity of the apartment owner. Zaminders used to provide for the living and livelihood of these people. The same happened with the colonial landlords in the bungalow houses. The apartment owners don't seem to share this sense of responsibility. Since these are considered as "services" standard rules for minimum work hours or wages of maids are also not taken into consideration showing a corruption of morality and simple exploitative attitude. By looking at the plans of typical apartment designs by our "developers" and "architects/designers" this social inequality and attitude towards the economically challanged class can be clearly understood. Architects design these houses to make this attitude real, giving shape to people's perception of how to treat these people and what kind of facility they would enjoy.

The kitchen is usually kept hidden because women usually are kept in a private corner of the house (purdah). Even though modern western styled kitchens are sometimes designed by the architect, the owners hardly use them in the same way. This shows the "western" public and "native" private domains - dichotomy of the Bangladeshi elite. While on the public, they flaunt a "classy social status oriented westernized appearance", in the private side they go back to traditional native habits, so the house is designed often in the western manner, but used in the native style. Lungi for example, is worn at home and in the public spaces a trouser is standard. The rickshaw puller does not maintain this "status" symbol so he wears the same thing at home and at work. The driver's "eating or living" space is another issue that creates a sense of unease (in the public image of high-status westernized living). A daytime common "drivers' room" is therefore often considered essential so that this image is not tarnished. This is often located outside the apartment and closer to the cars.


"While your divine intelligence and will, Imperator Caesar, were engaged in acquiring the right to command the world....I began to write this work for YOU, because I saw that you have built and are now building extensively, and that in future also you will take care that our public and private buildings shall be worthy to go down to posterity by the side of your other splendid achievements"

- Vitruvius (Ten Books of Architecture)

Alas! architects - the poor servants and accomplice who thinks (and that's the greatest irony) knows better.

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NEO
Thu Jul 13 2006, 10:42am
Admin Registered Member #4 Joined: Thu Aug 04 2005, 04:54am
: Dhaka
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mujtaba
Fri Jul 14 2006, 06:29pm
Registered Member #14 Joined: Tue Sep 20 2005, 08:54pm
: Honolulu, HI
Posts: 35
Hmm....."communist" that's interesting, I thought those were a dead breed?

Anyways, if you are designing what everyone else is in the city (notice how wonderful the city is), then no point being "creative" better start going to drafting schools. And please, don't get me wrong, if you ignore the program that your teachers give you, that's refusing to accept the challange. You have to accept the reality and transform that through a creative channel to something new, something better. That's what this should be all about. If you don't have a passion, a vision, a need to achieve something "higher" (other than grades), there are easier ways of doing that. You don't need brains for this, all you need is either to be clever or (pardon me for using the pun) "suck up" to a high-graded senior - a design god-father, who enslaves you and cashes in on your labor. Or better still, take a hike down baily quarters or the general area and you'll get the picture.

Talk about car-gonomics, a 24feet by 16feet grid always makes it work like a breeze. So you solve parking, then what? Hey are you designing for the car or the people? Are you telling me that the humans have to fit in the car-gonomics grid or I thought Vitruvius mentioned the square and the cube that fits the human proportions perfectly? Hmm.....just watched the "cars" movie and guess what, cars talk!

Do we "have" to make the car and man live together? Why not have the parking separate and freely design for humans? Parkings are places where women and children are not safe, but a home is one place where one needs to feel secure, safe and happy. What about the picturesque? The anti-urban (bring back the tree for christ's sake)? What about "muhulla" or "shops", control? What about the "vastu-purusha mandala"? What is the ideal space, environment that should house people. What is home? What are the prestige and status symbols that
must be created to give a sense of "high" living? What is "high living"? What is good design? Why? Who says this is good and that is bad? What make it good and what makes it bad?
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NEO
Sun Jul 30 2006, 04:33am
Admin Registered Member #4 Joined: Thu Aug 04 2005, 04:54am
: Dhaka
Posts: 666
Communists are dead breed. But the thoughts and the beliefs are not dead. See still Ernesto Che Guevara, Pavel of ‘Still is Tempered’, even Anondo, Sudip, Joyita of ‘Gorvodharinee’ are still igniting fires in hearts.

Going to submit this project this Thursday!
Did almost nothing but the floor plans. Bashirul Haq sir helped a lot however advised to change something also. Don’t know what’s going to happen this Thursday.
Everyone pray for me. Of course if someone is interested then join as a KAAMLA.

Edited Thu Nov 23 2006, 08:34am
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