Children living and brought up in orphanage institutions may suffer from severe sentimental, psychological behavior difficulties, such as trauma, hostile or anti-social behavior, less understanding of the world and grow up become adults with psychiatric impairments, which are becoming burning issues day by day. They learn great survival skills, but not great family skills and may have less sense of permanency.

The SOS children’s village, the largest non-governmental, non-profit, international children welfare organization, is operating in Bangladesh since 1974 and contributing alternative families to children, who are deprived from adequate parental care. Moreover, it runs a large range of programs and facilities to brace socially disadvantaged and economically weaken families by providing its sponsored kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, youth facilities, vocational training centers, medical and social centers and emergency response relief operations.

Further,  initiative has been taken to revive the system of extended family, where a orphan child can get a possibility of sharing and togetherness of a real family life. Additionally, there is an opportunity to encounter few challenges such as, i) Grip children psychology; ii) Gratifying their needs; iii) Human factors of a Child; iv) Involvement with the community; v) Promoting productivity through different activity and encourage built environment by “Productive Architecture”; vi) Nurturing creativity and training opportunities; vii) Scope of creating a stimulating, productive and healthy environment; viii) To create an opportunity to enhance friendly relations internationally through sharing and promoting our platform of learning and culture; ix) To change the destinies of orphan children so that they get personal attention and command to move beyond their heartaches.

In brief, the eventual challenge is to generate an environment that can enlighten the orphan children where they will spend a long span of their life and grow by playing, learning, working even when they are just little kids and can serve the society by making themselves self dependant.

The aim of the project is to make orphan children self-reliant, economically self-supported and mentally healthy. Hence, they can cope with any sorts of situations and get the capability to handle practical life where they will not be threatened with any situations that make them feel defeated or lost.

The project site is located adjacent to the Kirtankhola River. The site is a green field with an area of approximately 6.7 acres. The design proposal adds blending with the surrounding neighborhood and landscape. Through the design connections, local neighborhoods are invited inside the children’s village, to encourage social mixing. The entire village is preferred to be pedestrianised. The central pathway offers welcoming experience while leading towards a public square or “ চত্বর ”. The strategically placed water body restricts physical access between the active zone and residential zone but provides visual permeability. The essence of mixing has been suscitated through house placement, e.g. family houses are placed nearby community house. As a whole the master plan and typical floor plans try to capture the essence of rural environment while tying up all intimate and interactive spaces. The openness is welcomed and facilitated with children activity spaces where the children can interact and grow up together as one big community.

In a short, the children village is designed as their home, as a village to live in where they can build up themselves with proper education, guidance, good memories, care and love.

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