Urban Tune-Up: Architectural Packages for Block-Based Rooftop Spaces as Containers of Public Life

Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka offers almost no scope for creating public life. The city is almost lifeless with no spaces for play, interaction, or open green areas within its urban core. Middle- and lower-income residents find social life nearly invisible. Public spaces and open areas are practically missing at the city floor level in Dhaka’s dense urban fabric. During Dhaka’s scattered development, many unseen, leftover spaces have emerged, which lack interaction with city life. These spaces hold untapped potential. In this highly saturated city, rooftops represent the largest urban gap. The idea is to create an interconnected network of rooftops, activated by architectural packages that transform these barren rooftops into vibrant, functional areas. This new elevated layer will bring back social interaction, provide community facilities, and reintroduce green spaces into the urban environment. Typically, parks serve as an escape from the city. Here, however, parks will be an embedded part of the city’s urban infrastructure at an elevated dimension.

The chosen site, Karwan Bazar-Farmgate and its adjacent areas, is dense and compact, making it ideal for testing this concept. This zone will experience massive transformation due to the new metro stations, making it a hub for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). By combining insights from local practices with international urban design approaches, the idea focuses on the future development of this saturated city. The project intends to create a democratic system, carving out public space in a privatized city, aligning with city planning rules and regulations, and offering incentives for people to accept the design.

The project shows how we could carve out breathing space for the residents of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Dhaka is a barren city with hardly any open space and vegetation over the urban fabric. Demolishing existing structures to create those spaces isn’t a practical solution, especially as Dhaka continues to be shaped by large-scale projects and infrastructural development.

This project opens a gateway to rethinking the creation of public life in the city. There are several limitations to tune up the plot-developed buildings’ rooftops as a network of public spaces. Structural instability, policy-related problems, and the mindset of property owners are major factors in implementing this idea on a city-wide scale. So, exploring the limitless possibilities of rooftops will inspire building owners, developers, policymakers, and residents to collaborate on creating a combined solution to adapt the design. The project could also provide a model for public space in the event of future pandemics like COVID-19.

The project explores multiple plot-based & block-based rooftop scenarios to establish the new rooftop network. Adopting the idea could start a structural movement that will be followed by developers and housing corporations to invest in rooftops. It focuses on the future development of Dhaka by combining insights from local practices (Detailed Area Plan 2022, Dhaka) with international urban design approaches. If recognized, this project could reach out to various stakeholders from government and non-government organizations. It might lead to small-scale implementation of urban tune-up as a starting point, rethinking rooftops as an elevated layer of enhanced social, economic, and environmental value.