Revisiting Attached Houses Typology: Evaluating Its Potential for Middle-Income Housing in Urban Dhaka
This research evaluates the potential of reinterpreting the historical attached house typology of Old Dhaka as a viable, context-sensitive housing solution for middle-income residents in contemporary urban Dhaka through a design-based comparative analysis.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the crowded streets of Dhaka, one of the most densely populated cities on Earth, the question of where people will live is a constant, pressing reality. For decades, the city has grown upward, filling the skyline with tall apartment blocks that stack families high above the ground. While this vertical approach solves the problem of fitting many people into a small area, it often leaves the spaces between buildings feeling empty and disconnected, turning neighborhoods into collections of isolated towers rather than communities. At the same time, the city holds a deep history of a different way of living: the compact, attached house. These are homes built side-by-side, sharing walls with their neighbors, arranged in long rows that create narrow, shaded streets and intimate courtyards. This traditional form once allowed thousands of people to live close together while still feeling connected to the street and to each other. As the city struggles to balance the need for more housing with the desire for a livable, social environment, researchers are asking whether this old, familiar pattern can offer a solution for the modern middle-class family.
A team of researchers at Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology decided to test this idea not just by looking at old maps, but by drawing new ones. They gathered a group of architecture students and gave them a specific challenge: design housing for government employees on two large plots of land in the Mirpur district of Dhaka. The students were asked to explore three different ways to build. The first was the familiar high-rise tower, the second was a cluster of mid-sized buildings, and the third was the attached house, where units are linked together in rows. The goal was to see if the attached house could hold as many people as the towers while creating a better place to live. The students produced nine different designs, and the researchers analyzed them to see how each type of building handled density, social life, and the hot, humid climate of the region.
The results showed that the attached houses could indeed hold a significant number of people, though not quite as many as the tallest towers. The high-rise designs managed to fit between 400 and 610 people on every acre of land, while the attached house designs settled comfortably between 290 and 307 people per acre. This might sound like a drop in numbers, but the researchers found that the attached houses achieved a density that is already very high by urban standards, all while keeping the buildings to just four or six stories tall. This height is crucial because it keeps the buildings low enough that people on the upper floors can still see the street and the people walking below, maintaining a visual connection to the ground that is often lost in skyscrapers. The attached houses also used the land efficiently, covering about 35 to 40 percent of the ground with buildings, which left plenty of room for open spaces that were actually useful, rather than just empty gaps between towers.
Beyond the numbers, the designs revealed a profound difference in how people might interact. In the high-rise and cluster proposals, the open spaces often felt like leftover areas, large and undefined, sitting between buildings that did not really look at them. In contrast, the attached house designs created small, semi-enclosed courtyards and narrow streets that were directly overlooked by the homes surrounding them. These spaces were designed to be watched over by residents, creating a natural sense of safety and encouraging neighbors to meet. The designs also separated cars from pedestrians, keeping the inner courtyards free of traffic so children could play and adults could chat without fear. Even the walkways inside the buildings were reimagined; instead of dark, enclosed corridors, the attached house designs used open galleries that acted as social zones, allowing residents to see and hear the life of the neighborhood as they moved between their homes.
The study also looked at how these buildings would handle the intense heat and humidity of Dhaka. The attached houses, with their shared side walls, offered a natural advantage. Because the walls between neighbors were shared, there was less surface area of the building exposed to the direct sun, which helps keep the interiors cooler. The narrow streets created by the rows of houses provided shade for pedestrians, and the arrangement of the buildings allowed air to flow through the site, offering a way to cool the homes without relying entirely on electricity. While the high-rise towers created large open spaces at their base, their tall, exposed faces caught more sunlight, and the cluster designs fell somewhere in the middle. The attached houses managed to balance the need for shade and airflow with the need to pack many homes into a small area, echoing the climate-smart strategies used in Old Dhaka for centuries. However, the researchers were careful to note that these findings were based on design drawings and the identification of design intentions rather than actual environmental simulations or measurements of thermal performance.
The researchers were careful to note that these findings came from design drawings and the analysis of design intentions, not from people actually living in these buildings. They could not say for certain how residents would feel or how the buildings would perform in the real world without testing them in practice. However, the study suggests that the attached house is a viable and promising option for the future of Dhaka. It offers a way to build dense, affordable housing that does not sacrifice the human scale or the sense of community. By revisiting a traditional form and adapting it for modern needs, the attached house presents a path forward where the city can grow upward and outward at the same time, creating neighborhoods that are not just places to sleep, but places to live.
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