The proposal for the international competition for a cyclone shelter in Bangladesh by Lindsay Bremner and Jeremy Voorhees is conceptualized as a boat-building, referencing two local typologies – the boat and the landing ghat. Located in Ranggabali, a small village in the Patuakhali Province, the building is half submerged in water in times of cyclone flooding while beached against a concrete ghat in dry seasons. Sheltering its occupants in the liminal zone between land and water, it makes place by transitioning from depth and section to surface and plan. More images and architects’ descriptions after the break.
The shelter is entered up two flights of stairs, flanking a large stepped plinth which functions as site of social interaction and exchange during dry seasons, and for boat mooring and animal tethering during cyclones. People congregate in its hull, a woven interior space lined with layers of bunk beds and bamboo culm screens. Circumambulating this interior space at first floor level is a walkway behind a perforated concrete screen that registers the movement of the wind. Here, and in the entrance portico, small livestock and poultry are temporarily sheltered out of the wind during cyclone season. The rest of the year, these serve as extensions to interior space and vantage points from which to view the road.
