STHANIk

Architecture of Repurpose|

Community Garden at Mirpur

Project Type: Community Garden, Community Project
Project Location: Mirpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Project Area: 1440 sq. ft. 
Lead Architects: Saiqa Iqbal Meghna, Suvro Sovon Chowdhury
Team: Rahat Ibna Hasan
Photography: Saiqa Iqbal Meghna

The project is a part of a ‘temporary’ built pavilion with bamboo in the most expensive area of Dhaka for hosting an international event, which was supposed to be dismantled after the event. The only remaining would be the memories of a good work done with diligence and cared by the craft people. In pursuit of preserving a part of this ‘meant to be temporary work of architecture’, the initiative has been taken to relocate the fragment of it in a small community of low income people. The place is beside a water channel that flows through the neighborhood carrying all its waste. 

As soon as the relocation of the fragmented pavilion was done and the detailed bamboo enclosure was ‘placed’ near the water channel within the populated low income community, a new kind of symbiosis started to emerge. It is now used as an edible community garden for growing seasonal vegetables, cared for by the neighborhood around the plot. Though the plot was empty for so long, after the relocation, the presence of birds of different species, ranging from common local birds to waterfowl have increased significantly around that community garden. 

This ‘repurposed’ enclosure has turned the dynamic of the densely populated low-income community which now acts as a gathering space mostly used and maintained by the neighborhood women group. They enjoy the luxury of open space amidst the vegetable garden grown by them and spend quality leisure time in doing so.  The garden will soon start hosting open air classes and small events for the community children and the elderly people.