Two materials every Bangladeshi already owns. We build almost everything from them.
A jaali lets the breeze through and keeps the sun in pieces. It costs less than glass and never needs an air conditioner to forgive it.
Every hour the floor is redrawn. We design that drawing as carefully as the plan.
Nobody turned on a light. The building did the work.
Work · nine buildings
Stand in the room first. Then read the plan: the light on the floor is Dhaka's sun at that hour, thrown through that building's own wall, and a wall one brick deep swallows a high sun. The numbers are modelled.
How we work
We stand in the room at four before we draw it.Every site is visited at the hour its people will use it most. The first drawing is the light on the floor, the plan comes second.
Brick from within ten kilometres.Fired in the nearest kiln and laid by masons from the district, so the building is repaired by the people who built it.
No glass where a hole will do.A screen one brick deep lets the breeze through and cuts the sun into pieces. A fan is the last resort, an air conditioner is not in our drawings.
Seven buildings a year.Few enough that every one gets a drawing for every hour of its day.
The studio
Visitors are welcome on Thursdays at four, when our own west wall draws on the studio floor.
Ask for the four o'clock drawing of your room →