Creative Space

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

Syeda Faeza Hasan — 2021-07-13

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

Saleha Jamal — 2021-07-06

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 classification
has been done in ArcGis 10.5 and ERDAS IMAGINE 14. The study reveals that the settlement has
increased by about 90.43 per cent in the last 15 years around the Chatra wetland within the buffer
zone of 2 Sq km. Similarly agriculture, vegetation, water body, swamp and wasteland witnessed a
significant decrease by 5.94 per cent, 57.69 per cent, 26.64 per cent 4.52 per cent and 55.27 per cent
respectively from 2003 to 2018.

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

Sudipti Biswas — 2021-08-31

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 internalize
HFE in their thought process. A survey among the students also indicates the effectiveness of the studio approach for learning HFE.