Atlas of The Informal: Modernisation of the Vernacular in Korail’s Informal Settlement
“An Atlas Of The Informal” is an atlas of building typologies that have developed due to the adaptation of modernist building techniques in informal settlements in Korail Bosti, in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. Korail Bosti, directly translated to Korail slum, is an informal housing settlement that spans approximately 100 acres and is currently home to more than 50,000 residents. As majority of Korail’s inhabitants live below the poverty line and work low-income jobs, these neighbourhoods are typically hastily made, and residences are jam packed with limited facilities and plumbing. Governments deny aid or services to the inhabitants, causing these informal settlements to develop rules of their own. Residents scrap together local material and whatever they can find to construct self-assembled housing structures that typically don’t adhere to building regulations.
The atlas expands on details of construction, materials, and allocation of labor structures used to develop these four building typologies. Intimately interrogating residents and houses of Korail and online resources such as Youtube videos, news articles and construction documents, to accumulate images that were then used to develop drawings and diagrams that help with pedagogical understanding of these complex structures. These self assembled houses in Korail Bosti develop a new form of architecture, one that responds to the site and the immediate needs of the local community, and acts as a direct retaliation against the original objective of modernization. Despite modernism intending to design the world through engineering and a set of specific drawings / building typologies and technologies, it counteracted, giving skills to everyone that can then be adapted in whatever which way necessary. Utilising the research I developed illustrations, and a research booklet to relay all the information I gathered.
