Paula Rand
ARCH-4980.4 | Ted Ngai, Lecturer
AQUATECTONICS
Connecting Water and Dwelling in Informal Dhaka
PAULA RAND
Water is not a basic human right; water is a naturally occurring necessity, flowing through our earth connecting living and non-living things. At this moment in our history, 75% of the world lives in dense deltaic regions on coasts and floodplains. Bangladesh is positioned in one of the most fertile deltaic plains at the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghan rivers and their tributaries. With great fertility and a tropical monsoon climate comes extreme natural weather, with up to 70% of the flat plain under water during monsoon season. Dhaka, The capitasl city of Bangladesh, has swelled to a mega city status of 15 million by 2011. 500,000 people are migrating to the urban Dhaka each year, moving mostly to informal settlements. This astounding growth is taking place through migration from the countries eroding and saline agricultural lands. Over four million Bangladeshi people have lost their land and means of income when farmlands have been eroded. The industrial and commercial sectors are now encroaching, using the rivers as overflow for waste. This has caused the rivers to become contaminated with waste from the industrial, commercial, medical, and domestic sectors. The resulting informal settlements in Dhaka for those displaced by soil erosion, floods and drought are transitory.
My research proposes is that there is a holistic and intrinsic connection between the flow of water and dwelling. Through focusing on water flow, urban informal dwelling and materials, a transient form of dwelling is examined. People dwell in relationship to context, linked by their memories. Memories are associated to the context in which they are made, associated to physical materials and landscapes. As memories become layered over time, they become part of a cultural memory and social patterns which develop. Water is the basic element of life, both a giver of life and a taker of life. As people become more transient through displacement or a search for a better life, memories become associated with the temporal rather than the permanent landscape and so water is the material of dwelling. Dealing with the complex problems of water contamination, flooding, water collection and a large displaced population in the dense urban fabric of Dhaka, will be through recognizing the micro and macro connections between elements in changing water flow and dwelling, and the blending of infrastructural, architectural and agricultural solutions.