Poking up above the tall meadow flowers of a Piet Oudolf-designed garden is the post of a steeply pitched roof clad in corrugated metal. It gleams in the June sun and seems to echo the industrial appearance of the nearby structures. Although the idyllic setting suggests rural tranquillity, it is actually in a huge manufacturing complex in Weil-am-Rhein in south-west Germany, close to the border with Switzerland.
The complex belongs to Swiss furniture and design manufacturer Vitra, maker of products such as the Eames Lounge Chair and the futuristic Panton moulded chair. However, the structure with the corrugated metal roof, which looks like a whimsical little pavilion or a pleasingly rustic shelter, is not a Vitra design. It is a house designed to address some of the most catastrophic consequences of climate change in one of the world’s poorest countries, Bangladesh.
The Khudi Bari (“tiny house” in Bengali) has been erected on a campus of starchitects’ structures: a showroom by Herzog & De Meuron; a design museum by Frank Gehry; a conference centre by Tadao Ando; factories by Nicholas Grimshaw and Álvaro Siza; even a fire station by Zaha Hadid. It has now taken its place as a permanent fixture in this landscape of rather self-conscious expressions of design culture.
Yet this little house costs about the same to build as one of Vitra’s mid-priced chairs costs to buy: about $500, including labour. Easy to erect — and even easier to dismantle for reuse — it is made from the accessible and affordable materials of the global south: bamboo, profiled metal sheet and a handful of modest metal connecters.
It has been designed by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum and her studio to address the problems of providing housing in sites prone to flooding. “Two-thirds of Bangladesh is delta,” Tabassum says. “There are 700 rivers. It would be better to talk about it as a waterscape than a landscape.”
We are sitting beside the house at a bamboo table and bench, replicas of the ones she and her fellow designers used in the delta of the great Himalayan rivers where the first of these houses were built. Here in Weil-am-Rhein it resembles a rustic-chic picnic set — proof that context is everything.
The delta has always flooded, but the frequency is growing as a result of meltwaters from the Himalayas and rising sea levels. Some residents of the delta have been making their lives there for decades, others are fleeing climate change in search of land. One place they find it is in the chars (sandbars) that form once floodwaters recede and, after a few years, provide fertile land for farming. Accessible only by boat, these solid but vulnerable islands are, in effect, unowned free land. People who have been used to subsistence farming in the delta for generations, or those newly displaced from elsewhere, can set up on them without the need for land titles.
The Khudi Bari could hardly be simpler — and of course, that is the idea. “They need to be easy to erect and easy to dismantle if the floods look likely to come again,” Tabassum says. “The bamboo can be sourced outside the usual commercial chains, so there’s only this steel connector [a welded cluster of short tubes] which needs to be made, and we’re working with local companies so they can be made nearby too. There’s very little material needed, even the corrugated roof is easily available. Once the structure is up, the homeowners create their own facade.”
She shows me photos of examples. Some have delicate membranes of woven reeds, others have simpler, more modern metal panels. They look surprisingly elegant. As Rolf Fehlbaum, the company’s former chair and son of Vitra founders Willi and Erika Fehlbaum, says: “The architecture of resilience can also be beautiful.”
The ground floor here has been left open while the upper floor has an air of Japanese domesticity. It has a wooden frame and white panels, large, unglazed windows with hinged shutters that encourage cross ventilation and simple wooden floorboards. It is sparse but cosy, that deep pitch creating an interior like an Alpine lodge. “Even if the ground level floods, the first floor can still be used,” Tabassum says.
“These sandbars might only last a few months or a few years. No one knows. But the residents, who have been living under these conditions all their lives, can read the changes in the water and they know if another flood is coming. So they can dismantle the homes before the floods arrive.”
There is a long history of architects attempting to solve the world’s housing problems with brilliantly engineered solutions. In fact, just next to Tabassum’s little house is the Diogene house, designed in 2013 by Renzo Piano. It is another minimal dwelling, autonomous and reduced to as little as possible. However, it is much more expensive, Fehlbaum says.
Tabassum’s little bamboo structure is not a prototype or an optimistic experiment; it is the real thing. The first hundred or so houses were funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and Tabassum is pushing to get many more built through her Foundation for Architecture and Community Equity.
I ask her how it feels to have this modest dwelling sitting in Weil-am-Rhein, surrounded by designs from some of the world’s most famous names. “It’s symbolic of the climate crisis,” she says, “a reminder that it is a reality and of our responsibilities as architects. We share our planet.”
Its inclusion here is part of a conscious shift in emphasis on the Vitra Campus towards landscape and sustainability. It joins not only the adjacent garden, but a hairy-looking garden house by Tsuyoshi Tane, a thatched-covered shelter for the gardeners.
Tabassum, though modest and seemingly shy, is herself now a globally esteemed architect, lauded and awarded for buildings including Dhaka’s stunning Museum of Independence and the impressive Bait Ur Rouf mosque. Is she too becoming a starchitect? She winces a little. “When I became an architect, I had to ask myself: do I serve the 1 per cent who are used to having their dreams realised? Or do I try and serve the rest?
“I do get invitations to work around the world, but I’ve always resisted them. I feel I would need to understand the place where I am building, the context, and, frankly, there’s so much to do in Bangladesh.”
Tickets can be booked to visit the Vitra Campus, vitra.com
