Project Name
Project Type:
1) urban planning design strategy
4) interior design
6) architecture
Project Mission/Goal:
1) improve the spirit of conventional cafe in Bangladesh
Project Description:
Architecture, emptiness, a state of mind, a void, a desire, a reminder, a wish and all the other elements that we can and can not speak of. Architecture is what we inhabit and what inhabits us. It possesses the truth of understanding or misunderstanding of its environment. It stands as the silent witness of culture's virtue as well as its rupture. But in world of our own, architecture kindles our soul in a way that makes us feel good to be a part of a collective consciousness. Cafe Mango and its becoming testify that very desire. Its intention is quite clear and honest in its expression.
Cafe mango stands on the idea of "presence of absence" in the city. It denies, if any, pretension in its design. It also dismisses any "borrowed ideas" in its construction. Only upon closer examination, it reveals the honesty it possesses. Cafe Mango is a literal translation of carving and etching, like a print maker on a zinc plate. In each successive layer of its design, it reveals the language of the investigation and the materials that got investigated.
Amidst the mist of pseudo progressive "Building Production", like some sort of mushroom cultivation, Dhaka city thrives on chaos and untold complexities. It is also a place that has been experiencing all kind of transformation in "STILL BECOMING". It is a city of mosaics, with divers back grounds, and all the other grounds in between. May it be the built fabric of urban sprawl of the moving bodies that occupies every inch of that fabric? The constructed reality or nightmare, what ever you any call it, has weighed down Dhaka city well below the danger line of healthy living. It is a city littered with materials that one can find from all corners of the globe. At a closer look, Dhaka reveals her honest to-god-self; a "Cuckoos Nest" filled with all kinds of worldly things with ort any real reason. Its round-the-clock struggle to survive with more than enough inhabitants makes one wonder how on earth this city can offer harmony in urban living. A city with over ten million people, yet this city can easily make one feel lonely and offer no room for one to be alone. At the same time this city offers precious opportunities for new things and new ideas.
The concept of Cafe Mango was one such opportunity. A culture that is known for its cultural habits, Adda baji [Buddy talk], did nit have any public place where one could carry on such act with a little bit of civility. There aren't too many places that one can go with a book or a magazine to read and to enjoy a good cup of coffee or tea along with it. Nor are there places that one can meet a friend or bump into a stranger and becomes friends over a drink. Presence of such absent places game rise to the idea of designing a cafe. The name "Mango" was chosen to further support such idea. Mango, a juicy, tropical fruit comes after a long waited hot summer and it is the kind of fruit that can be eaten at all stages of its life. Raw, ripe and rotten and almost every one can afford to eat a mango or two while it is out in the season. So, one can say mango, is a fruit of love and desire.
To help support the conceptual idea of the design, the process of design became just as careful an endeavor. The idea of etching on physical surfaces, collaring, ways to understand the conflicting issues and transparency, literal and phenomenon became the driving force of the design process. To understand the inherent principal of materials, each element that was found on site or any material that was brought into the project was kept at its most original state. The idea of cladding or paint treatment of any surface was strictly controlled. All the metal [New and recycled] works that helped support the project were kept in their factory finish quality. To prevent them from resting, all metal surfaces were treated with butcher's wax, all pine wooden surfaces were treated with clear water proofing sealant, de-plastered brick walls were washed with water and brushed clean.
To better understand each material and its inner quality, selection of materials were dept to a bare minimum. In the design, only four different materials have been used; clear glass pane, M.S. steel plate, brick and pine wood. The proportionate use of each material was tested in the drawings in collage form. To create a strong connection between various spaces of the cafe, garden, main seating room, mezzanine, roof terrace, and the street, vertical and horizontal planes.
This is the story of a transformation, through a Building and its Rebuilding. Architecture played a small role in its becoming, to justify and to validity of an architect's understand of a space, of a place and of a community. There are no preconceives and purpose to achieve and to elevate the status of the architect of this architecture. Rather the platform of architecture, if achieved, would give rise to the defining role of the architect, who performed in its conception.
In a city of fragmented thoughts, overlapped desire and capital I persuasion, gives one to take refuge in a shelter that is hidden from the eye and removed from the conscious. Physics and physicality of being in a place which characteristically know for voidlessness and emptylessness, pushes all of her inhabitants to pursue the enigma of subconsciously complete and humanly real. This trejectorial persue gives the architecture to rise from her ruptured ground to justify her position and plea for her communal acceptance, among the rest.
I see you, you see me and the wall sees us. It is this threshold that you and I are most venerable. That makes us a work of art, public art for the rest. The wall with the eye, the table and us with our conversation become the subject of interest, inquiry, ironed and what not. In a walled up society, we become the point of departure for some one that you and I do not know nor we do we care to know to intervene with certain righteousness. It is their turn and their desire to analyze you and I to make stories for them and for the society.
This is the molecule of a typical public place for us. Like it or leave it, spectators are here to stay. If you are lucky they will cheer you off to find immense satisfaction from the banal construct of everyday life. Unfortunate? yes, but where else will you go? Beyond the border, you won't be part of public art, just a mere spectator.
I thought of a room that will give me a sense of proportion, a room which will tell me that I am not that tall of a man. The sun and the shades with the extra room above my head, this room should help me to think, looking up, like an artist with all my artistic neurons on and ready to pour like melted wax.
The thin rays of sun through the sun screen will give me enough to get rid of my distraction from the unwanted. A world within a world deserves a careful approach and enough distance to be in it. Now lets say, yes!
Nominated by Md.Imrul kayes
