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কল - অন্ত ADAPTIVE REUSE OF AMIN JUTE MILLS COMPLEX
Year: 2022
Category: Refurbishment
Amin Jute Mill is a government owned jute mill complex located in Sholoshohor, Chittagong. The mill was originally established by Maulana Amin, a Pakistani millionaire in 1954. Within 17 years the mill grew and eventually formed a large worker's community making a local name for the site which it still carries ‘Amin gate’. After the independence in 1971, the site was taken as enemy land and went under the newly formed Bangladesh Government. The mill kept on running under the supervision of BJMC and the community continued to grow out of the site. In 2020, all government Jute mills were decommissioned and today a part of the 70-year-old site is abandoned. Soon after the decommission most of the workers migrated out and with the mills closed, the site is now quiet, lifeless, and purposeless. Although the complex was constructed outside of the city back in 1954, today the city expanded and the settlements around the site are surrounded from all four sides. Within this gray jungle, the site stands with 80 acres of breathing green topography. Now abandoned and with no plans declared by the government, the site is waiting to be taken over by the surroundings to construct residential and commercial buildings, robbing the neighbor of the only chance of having a green space in the context. Sholoshohor is an area where civil amenities and green open spaces for the public are absent. This gives the project the perfect opportunity to repurpose and rethink the area for public use. This project aims to revive this abandoned site with robust urban energy serving the surrounding neighbor's needs through adaptive reuse and repurposing of the jute mill complex.
Analysis and findings
As for the site context, various maps are used to analyze the land use, connectivity, permeability, existing structures and urban character. Here a three-kilometer diameter area was taken into account. Apparently, the site is now mostly residential in terms of land use mapping. Even though the site used to be an industrial area now, with the expansion of the city it has changed character, the 80-acre site physically connects 7 societies on the east, north and south directly.
Proposals and Considerations
The primary target is to revive this dead zone in the locality and preserve this precious forest, the proposed functions will attract and bring urban energy. The park will connect the localities, increase permeability throughout the site, preserve the forest and connect the proposed functions with the context into one urban landscape.
Zone A development
We have a number of existing structures and solidified green forest frozen in time. First of all, we need a masterplan development and road network, later we need demolition and addition to attain the final output. Since most of the structures are steel structure and are therefore modular we can simply dismantle the part we need for open space. And these parts mostly become our scope to add new volumes of spaces as needed.
Zone B AND c development
FOR ZONE B Since we are dealing with adaptive reuse one of the priority was to use the residential buildings in this zone as much as possible. According to the calculation, only a banquet hall needs to be built after repurposing all the floor space. FOR ZONE C For this zone the Mill unit 3 was revived with mill function as the road is a bypass of national highway. This unit will be used for exclusive just production providing new job opportunities. The existing slum was disbanded, and a new mid-high income class housing was proposed. The 240 residents were relocated to the abandoned workers quarter. This solved the issue of the residents not getting proper facilities and infrastructural services.
JUNAED ABU SAIF
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