Densely Populated Dhaka city often fails to adequately meet the educational and recreational needs of marginalized community, who often lack spaces for carrying out those activities whether it is in their house or in their local arena. Due to high land demand in the city, it is not sensible to accompany these activities through the proposition for new structures in the city.

The Tejgaon Flyover site was the first initiative to restore existing underutilized by giving them some purposeful meaning. This site was deliberately chosen due to the presence of a large number of marginal people in the neighboring Tejgaon Industrial Area. As the flyover stands next to a residential and industrial area, the underneath road devoid heavy traffic circulation and that creates some opportunity spaces under the flyover to be used for community service.

The research was a part of a master’s thesis and the design came out from an extensive ethnographic fieldwork with the poor settlers in the Tejgaon Industrial Area. design is done from the perspective of these special group of children whose needs and behavior are obviously different from formal school children.  It proposes educational facilities for both the disadvantaged children living in the area, who cannot afford to go to a formal school as well as the underprivileged men and women workers from rickshaw pullers to industrial to workers to domestic workers as well. The goal of the project is to provide education along with art, music, recitation and dramas and so on. Project uses prefabricated structural features  which was specifically used for easy transportability. Construction Materials were bamboo wood and board panels .

Project background and team profile: 

Deyal Kotha started as a design intervention project that promotes interactive education for the disadvantage communities living next to the Tejgaon Flyover in Dhaka city through an amalgamation of artworks and cultural activities using the underutilized wall underneath the flyover.  The research for the project was first initiated under the supervision of a master’s thesis project at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

The project was funded  with the Edward M Kennedy Center Small Grant in 2014. ASF-AWARD-2015 which honors initiatives to improve public spaces globally and Walk21 Vienna:  the Walking Visionaries Award for Planning and Design for Livable Public Spaces. The design was developed by a team of  young architects namely Srijon Barua, Samain Sabrin and Naziha Mohammed under the supervision of Sahjabin Kabir and Tanzia Islam and implemented by Avantgardes, a non profit organization in co-operation with DCC North and  EMK centre Dhaka . The name was suggested by one of our designer , Srijon Barua. Teachers who are working here, are volunteers from the NGO “ light of hope”. Other project partners are Germanprobashe and Voices of Bangla (VoB) .