Purity, System, Comfort: A Micro-historical Study of Change in Built Form and Cultural Practice, with Particular Respect to Water Use in the Modern Residential Architecture of the Bengali Muslim Upper-Middle Class (1950 – 2000)
| dc.contributor.advisor | Scriver, Peter | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Bartsch, Katharine | |
| dc.contributor.author | Uzra, Mehbuba Tune | |
| dc.contributor.school | School of Architecture and Built Environment | en |
| dc.date.issued | 2022 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Buildings are substantial investments, in both material and cultural terms, that tend to be designed for a purpose. Residential buildings provide structure (physical and spatial), and systems (ventilation, plumbing, food and waste management, cleaning and maintenance, safety and security, etc.) to serve the dwelling needs and comfort of the intended residents. Designs change when the user needs change – “form follows function” – or so the theory goes. But, what happens in practice and over time when building designs and needs fall out of step? Do such mismatches simply fail, or are user needs and associated behaviours also capable of adjustment? Indeed, it may be arguable that ‘function follows form’ in such cases, especially in contexts undergoing major social transformations where new patterns of everyday residential architecture may simultaneously be drivers as well as reflections of cultural change. This study explores this dynamic two-way relationship between built form and cultural practice in the context of the major social changes that unfolded in postcolonial East Pakistan and its rapidly modernising successor state, Bangladesh, over the second half of the twentieth century. Specifically, the study examines the dialogue between the changing cultural norms and dwelling practices of the modern Bengali Muslim middle class and the evolving design norms and patterns of residential architecture that were typical of that period. Focussing tactically on changes over time in specific design features and dwelling practices associated with water use, the study addresses its primary questions – about the agency of the built environment (its design, performance, and reproduction) in broader processes of cultural change – to the particular crisis of potable water scarcity in present day Dhaka, a critical facet of the environmentally unsustainable state of hyper-urbanisation that the Bangladeshi capital is currently experiencing in parallel with comparable emerging megacities of the Global South. Pin-pointing shifts in the demand for this scarce resource, and its consumption, in the slower incremental changes in the pattern of residential architecture and associated dwelling practices observable over a period of decades, this micro-historical study offers spatially and ethnographically grounded empirical insight into the agency of architectural design in moulding cultural practices and potentially mediating them to be more sustainable. To achieve the historical perspective and thickness of description required to support this analysis, the study has also engaged architecture – specifically hand-drawn dwelling plans produced by the respondents themselves – as a tactic of inquiry to examine recollections of lived experience in current and multiple previous dwellings in which respondents had resided over the course of their lifetimes. Gathered through over forty semi-structured interviews conducted in Dhaka in 2019, this empirical data-base of plans and interviewtranscripts was subsequently interrogated and interpreted through a theoretical framework informed by pertinent scholarship in ethnography and feminism, as well as architecture. Through the lens of architecture, this interdisciplinary study has also attempted to contribute more broadly to critical understanding of the cultural history of modern post-colonial Muslim Bengali society, the influential upper middle class of Bangladeshi professionals and nation-builders in particular, by interpreting their adaptation and resistance to the radically transforming built forms and residential patterns observed. Foregrounding the dual struggle for emancipation from colonialism and recognition of the regionally and culturally distinct identity of Bengali Muslim society that led to the separation of Bangladesh from postpartition Pakistan, the thesis traces the multifarious behavioural, social, and cultural demands and influence of the Bengali Muslim middle class on the designs of modern dwellings. Mapping the interdependence between architecture and culture, the ethnographically enhanced case studies reveal sequences of incrementally evolving patterns of dwelling in which several aspiring generations of modern Bengali families establish domestic lifestyles that reflect, contest, and calibrate spiritually and socio-culturally situated experiences of modernity. The research reveals how and when, in this rapidly transitioning built environment but still culturally specific context, rigorous traditional water-use practices may still prevail. Articulating the extended discussion and interpretation of the evidence with respect to three culturally and contextually distinctive, and both intellectually and emotively mobilising ideals – ‘Purity’, ‘System’, and ‘Comfort’ – the thesis discerns how deep, complex and compelling such relationships between long-standing water culture and contemporary design choices may be, and how these need to be better understood in order to chart a more sustainable path for the architectural development of Bangladesh, and comparable deltaic contexts experiencing hyper-urbanisation, in the future. | en |
| dc.description.dissertation | Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Architecture and Civil Engineering, 2022 | en |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/2440/138240 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.provenance | This thesis is currently under Embargo and not available. | en |
| dc.subject | Residential architecture | en |
| dc.subject | cultural practice | en |
| dc.subject | water-use | en |
| dc.subject | wetness | en |
| dc.subject | human behaviour | en |
| dc.subject | Bengali Muslim upper-middle class | en |
| dc.title | Purity, System, Comfort: A Micro-historical Study of Change in Built Form and Cultural Practice, with Particular Respect to Water Use in the Modern Residential Architecture of the Bengali Muslim Upper-Middle Class (1950 – 2000) | en |
| dc.type | Thesis | en |
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