Learning Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) in Architectural Education: A Study of Studio Approach in Bangladesh

All the human activities take place in the built environment and therefore human factors/ergonomics (HFE) is an essential design consideration for the built environment designing process. Surprisingly, there have been limited studies on integrating HFE in the design process as well as in the education of architecture. Teaching HFE in architecture is different from teaching HFE in the disciplines that focuses on precise ergonomic application. Architectural education primarily deals with accommodating human activities in the built environment; and therefore, teaching HFE focuses on anthropometry, space standards, and an in-depth understanding of space requirements for relevant human activities. In architectural education, HFE can be taught as theory courses and/or in the design studio courses. This article focuses on the studio approach with an overview of several studio courses and a meticulous study of a studio course that teaches HFE principles. The study follows desktop research, participant observation, and a questionnaire survey. It is observed that the studio approach provides an opportunity for a deeper understanding of the HFE principles and their application in space design. Specifically, the practice of learning within the studio setup, group work and peer critique, assessment and feedback with critique sessions before the evaluation, etc. have a profound impact on the students to internalizeHFE in their thought process. A survey among the students also indicates the effectiveness of the studio approach for learning HFE.

Re Thinking the Public Toilet of Dhaka City: An Adaptable Prototype Design Solution to Improve the Existing Situation

Dhaka is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world with a population of 21 million. With the constantly rising inhabitants, this urbanizing hub officially only has 122 public toilets, and in reality, most of them are not functional (Sanyal, November 05, 2016). Different studies also suggested that current situations of the public toilets in the city are unusable and unhygienic. Apart from a few good ones, most toilets have filthy floors, inadequate lighting and ventilation, and unbearable odor of human waste. Although unhygienic open defecation by men is a common scene in the city, for the woman it is not an option. While the city plans to construct a few, there still will be a huge need for public toilets to meet the demand of the vast population. It is critical to realize the challenges existing and evolving from the forbidding public hygiene situation and the lack of proper public infrastructure. Understanding the user group is crucial as modern and costly toilets end up being rejected than being used. Thus the paper tries to address the problems and suggests design strategies to achieve a feasible design solution for a sustainable public toilet that supports and empowers communal hygiene. The contribution of this paper is not only to promote a design solution but how this infrastructure can integrate with the surrounding urban context. A modular prototype is proposed which is adaptable, feasible, cost-effective, easy to erect, and can be plugged into any corner of the city. Rethinking public toilets as an adaptable prototype is not only about providing proper sanitation but also encouraging people about hygiene education, awareness, and innovation. The design is conceptualized as a prefabricated self-sustainable modular unit that can be altered, increased, or decreased as per the necessity of the surrounding area.

Remote Sensing Application for Exploring Land Use and Land Cover Dynamics in and Around Chatra Wetland, English Bazar, West Bengal

Wetlands are often called as biological “supermarket” and “kidneys of the landscape” due to their multiple functions, including water purification, water storage, processing of carbon and other nutrients, stabilization of shorelines and support of aquatic lives. Unfortunately, although being dynamic and productive ecosystem, these wetlands have been affected by human induced land use changes. India is losing wetlands at the rate of 2 to 3 per cent each year due to over-population, direct deforestation, urban encroachment, over fishing, irrigation and agriculture etc (Prasher, 2018). The present study tries to investigate the nature and degree of land use/land cover transformation, their causes and resultant effects on Chatra Wetland. To fulfil the purpose of the study, GIS and remote sensing techniques have been employed. Satellite imageries have been used from United States Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager for the year 2003 and 2018. Cloud free imageries of 2003 and 2018 have been downloaded from USGS (https://glovis.usgs.gov/) for the month of March and April respectively. Image processing, supervised classificationhas been done in ArcGis 10.5 and ERDAS IMAGINE 14. The study reveals that the settlement hasincreased by about 90.43 per cent in the last 15 years around the Chatra wetland within the bufferzone of 2 Sq km. Similarly agriculture, vegetation, water body, swamp and wasteland witnessed asignificant decrease by 5.94 per cent, 57.69 per cent, 26.64 per cent 4.52 per cent and 55.27 per centrespectively from 2003 to 2018.

Coherence Among Street Vendors Act and City Planning Policies Case Study- Patiala

The magnitude of informal sector and its contribution to national economy indicates that 92% of total work force of 457 million in India, work in the informal sector. Informal sector contributes 60% to country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product). This sector shares 98% of the total enterprises in the country. As per 2011 census, Patiala has 4.46 lakh urban population served by 22,000 formal units and 7,000 informal units. Out of these 7,000 informal units, about 2000 informal units fall in walled city. This paper is an attempt to review the coherence among the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 and the City Planning Policies by studying the provisions made by the urban local bodies (ULB) to address the issues of informal sector under this Act and its integration with the city Master Plan before the enactment and after the enactment of the Vendors Act 2014. For better understanding the author has studied the historical evolution of informal trading activities in Patiala, its growth pattern, trend, spatial distribution, socio economic characteristics, space occupied, movement within informal and formal trade and its impacts on traffic, land use and physical environment. Salient features of The Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending Act,2014 have been discussed along with the practical application of the same by Municipal Corporation Patiala and its coherence with the city planning document.

THE Exploration of Effective Spatial Performance of Accessible Neighbourhood Green (Ang), Including its Proportion and Standard Distance from User in Dhanmondi Residential Area, Dhaka

Urban physical context can be analyzed across three key matrixes (3-P) among others i.e. place, path, and people. So, pragmatic analysis of spatial effective performances connecting 3-P, require provoking frequency of people’s experience. Acknowledging this issue, the demand for accessible neighbourhood green (ANG) at an appropriate distance becomes the primary concern to enhance the quality of life and liveability in a city. However, with the continued urban growth and densification, the discrepancy between the demand and supply of open space continues to vary requiring adjustments to remain responsive. The real-life circumstance results in a shortage of parks and open areas in terms of demand and supply within accessible distance in Dhaka city. This paper intends to examine this issue through the case of the planned Dhanmondi Residential Area (DRA) in Dhaka. Despite having provision of multiple open spaces in DRA, visitor’s frequency varies due to age and gender group accessibility conditions and varying distances. Considering existing spatial norms set by Detail Area Plan (DAP), Dhaka structure plan (DSP), and numerous research works on Dhaka open spaces, the major inquiry posed here is whether these open spaces are appropriate for DRA or not. Therefore, the objective of this paper focuses on examining the quality of the physical environment of Neighbourhood public open spaces termed here as accessible neighbourhood green (ANG) in DRA to examine their adequacy concerning proportion and distance synchronized with the frequency of visits. The initial part of the paper focuses on conceptualizing the problem vis-à-vis the existing scenario. Surveys and interviews have been conducted to assess people’s perceptions in terms of comfort, accessibility, sociability, and user frequency aligned with proximity. The result indicates that the provision of one appropriate ANG within two or three standard blocks apart contribute to enhancing the quality of life for the city dwellers and their liveability.

Land Use Land Cover Change Detection and Measuring Horticulture Expansion through Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques in Rambiara Catchment, Kashmir Valley, India

Horticulture industry is backbone of the economy of the Jammu and Kashmir, it has increased spontaneously from a recent couple of decades and had immensely impacted the socio-economic conditions of the inhabitants of the Rambiara Catchment. The study aimed to identify the varied land use and land cover categories prevailing over the Rambiara catchment and attempted to study the temporal changes. Multispectral images of the Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 were brought into use by making the LULC classes through the maximum supervised classification for the images of year 1999 and year 2019. Whole the study area was classified into eight major land cover categories i.e., Horticulture, Settlement, Water, Riverbed, Dense Forests, Sparce Forests and Waste Lands. The results obtained depicted that there was a large-scale positive change observed by the land cover categories of Horticulture +172.67 percent, Settlement +112.06 percent and sparse forest by +28.44 percent. The horticulture remained the highest achiever over the last 20 years and this is because of the high cash value realized from fruits, less agricultural production obtained from crops other than fruits and also due to changing climatic.

In Search of a Settlement Pattern for Bengal Delta Through Theoretical Re-Interpretations

The purpose of this study based on secondary source materials is to reinterpret and classify settlementtypology that has relevance to the Bengal Delta. The theoretical analysis were used to figure out the Delta Settlement typologies and to study commonalities or core issues related to settlement formation. This desktop study together with available literature shows that many studies were carried out on the evolution of settlements and also on patterns of settlements. Globally settlements were seen to be fundamentally classified into two broad groups on the basis of their historic origin, that is, hunters and gatherers settlements and settled agricultural settlements. Among the settled agricultural pattern, there is a sub-group of wet-rice cultivation culture. Studies show that Bengal Delta typology is situated in a special thread of ‘rain-fed rice cultivation culture’ in the ‘warm-humid’ Bengal Delta region. With this textual footing, several conceptual ideas were evaluated and finally, the five principles of Doxiadis regarding the universal settlement formulation specifying the core components have been found relevant and also Mowla’s hypothesis for settlement formation in the warm humid Bengal Delta has been found to be of relevance to explain the formation and evolution of the settlements model of the Bengal Delta found through the historic interpretation of old documents and subsequent studies.

Critical Review of Street Connectivity Between Tejgaon Industrial Area and Adjacent Hatirjheel Development

Tejgaon’s development process was initiated in the 1950s by the Department of Public Works (PWD) as an industrial zone and it was also indicate in the first master plan of Dhaka (1959). In1968, Tejgaon was designed as light industrial area by the Dhaka Improvement Trust (DIT). After Liberation war in 1971 Tejgaon become the most sought after place for industrial activity for not only its being on the outskirts of the than city center but also for the rising demand for the growing population of Dhaka. Several residential areas were developed beyond Tejgaon industrial areas (TIA) resulting in the rapid transformation of land use at this point into a mixed use development changing the physical characteristics of TIA. Responding to this transformation, the Government of Bangladesh has decided to develop Tejgaon industrial area as commercial cum residential hub. At the same time low lying areas i.e. Hatirjheel area on the south of TIA was developed to connect the northern residential areas (beyond TIA) with the older urban core. TIA thus came in between Hatirjheel development and Northern residential areas as such requiring rethinking of the street connectivity in the area. Transformation of TIA and the development of Hatirjheel provides an opportunity to rethink about the connectivity of road network. This study critically reviews the street connectivity between TIA and the adjacent new Hatirjheel development. It is identified that the new Hatirjheel development did not take note of the older TIA road network thus creating problem of urban mobility and integration. This study aims at identifying the street connectivity by quantitative and qualitative method using tools like Depthmapx10 to understand the new dynamics and suggest measures for better urban mobility.

Rethinking Use of Individual Room Air-conditioners in View of COVID 19

As the World Health Organization is examining the airborne nature of COVID 19, there is past research on other airborne infections which set all encompassing guidelines. Even as more data begins to be available regarding COVID, there is proven spread of airborne disease like tuberculosis being transmitted by this route. As the summer months approach, there is an increased use of Air Conditioners in the tropical regions of the world. India, too being in this part of the world sees an active rise in the indoors which are being air conditioned to meet the thermal comfort requirements of the rising urban population which is spending a large chunk of time indoors. This is coupled with the enforced lockdown which encourages people to stay indoors to prevent the spread of infection. In such situations the use of Room air conditioner requires rethinking as they re-circulate the indoor air without any Fresh air supply into the room. To reduce heat gain and save the electric load of the room AC, people tend to seal the windows further. This paper looks at many possible ways of finding out infection spread in spaces and one of them is used to find out the probability of airborne infection spread in a typical public space. An experiment to validate the same has been conducted in a classroom setup with results analysed. Increased ventilation has been demonstrated to show a lesser probability of infection spread.

Architectural Conservation Proposal of Kashinath Bhaban: A Vivid Example of Colonial Architecture in Bengal

During the Colonial period, Bangladesh with a rich cultural heritage and cultural identity is vividly conveyed and navigated as an image of power, pride and creativity. For this research study, the authors carefully chosen a unique ancient building named “Kashinath Bhaban” of Panam Nagar. Panam Nagar is an old settlement as a part of Sonargaon area of Bangladesh. This edifice abides the evidence to the style and design of Colonial architecture in Bengal. It is absolute that the whole Panam city including the building Kashinath Bhaban play an important role to represent our cultural heritage or our glorious past. Therefore an urban conservation of Panam Nagar is needed. This study concentrates on the proposal for the architectural conservation of the building Kashinath Bhaban of Panam which have precious and research worthy documentation or information. The overall research study conducted here is focused on the demonstration of the possible directions of architectural conservation which is based on the building’s plan layout, elevations, sectional details, structure as well as construction materials, decoration and ornamentation. For the architectural conservation of the building, here the authors consider restoration procedure as a conservation technique which will help to represent own belief with historical value and cultural exclusivity to the architecture.