Abstract:
“SUSTAINABLE HOUSING FOR COAL MINE WORKERS: BARAPUKURIA COAL MINE
VILLAGE, DINAJPUR” is a housing project for Barapukuria Coalmine Company employees. A trip
to northern Bengal villages made me notice how Bangladesh's rural vernacular has undergone a
dramatic shift over the past few decades and inspired me to develop a "village" as my thesis project.
The project site is situated in Diaper, Barapukuria, in a village named Dhulaudal. The place, there the
mild nature is the force to play with, has become an important component from which the project's
master plan can be created. The project is like a journey that began with the aim of understanding the
morphology of the rural vernacular, from a small living unit to the pattern in which the rural vernacular
is understandable from a small living unit to the pattern in which the paddy fields, forests, little villages
are composed to create the unique artwork of nature.
The design focus of the master plan should be to compose the components in such a way that the spaces
are demarcated but blended into each other and produce a flow that opens into the current stream,
while the existing forest penetrates into the site and merges with the site's landscape. The idea of unit
design might be to create a unit as the core of the household surrounding a court, then replicate this
unit pattern and modify it to create patterns for the clusters to present users with different but
interesting open space levels.
