Improvising, Performing and Drawing Co-Design: Rajapur Women’s Literacy and Community Health Care Building, Bangladesh
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 13 - Architecture, Built Environment and Planning
- Output identifier
- v1175
- Type
- K - Design
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- December
- Year
- 2017
- URL
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https://ourbuildingdesign.wixsite.com/ourbuildingdesign
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This award-winning small building in Rajapur village, Bangladesh, was devised and built using participatory design methods as part of a social transformation project. Addressing the community’s lack of access to healthcare, it also enables women’s empowerment through literacy and income generation in a remote village with cultural restrictions and high maternal and infant mortality.
The research explores and tests iterative drawing, performance, face-to-face communication and co-design methods which emerged as key tools in the creation and dissemination of this project. These were used in the fundraising, design, development, construction, post-occupancy evaluations, and in the wider academic dissemination of findings; and as part of feedback and ongoing work with the villagers themselves.
The building was conceived and fundraised by Fellows as architect of the Mannan Foundation Trust on a specific site prone to seasonal flooding – an environmental hazard affecting most of Bangladesh. Fellows’ participation strategy began by running children’s English lessons and drawing workshops, and gradually involving women and men. The conventional Western-conceived design approach (which successfully generated fundraising in the UK) proved incomprehensible to the community on-site, leading Fellows to devise alternative participatory methods in further community workshops. Methods included: setting-out and testing versions of the building at 1:1 through performance; local appraisals of construction types; simple treatments to reduce rot in bamboo construction; a home-based clay brick-making programme generating income for skilled local women; and sharing skills including concrete-working.
Built 2015-2017, the project won an RIBA Rising Star Award 2017; Architecture Sans Frontières Award 2017 (Commendation); SEED/Pacific Rim Community Network Design Award 2018; and an RIBA President’s Award for Research 2019 (Commendation). Fellows’ iterative development of workshops, including performances, drawings and videos, is used in written publications and presentations to analyse, test and disseminate her findings with international research communities and in ongoing work with the building users.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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