Construction site of human-wave tactics
Dhaka is in the midst of construction boom. From morning till midnight and regardless of weekdays or holidays, the construction sites are in operation. The first night I stayed in Dhaka, I was wondering what kept going on with strange sounds, I found that the construction was doing next to the hotel until midnight. It became a little quiet at last and then I was about to sleep but woke up again with the sound of a BANG. At dawn, the morning prayer broadcast begun and woke me up again. I was troubling with this every night fanfare, but weirdly and gradually getting used to it.
In Dhaka, many construction sites are on progress all around the city. Formwork by iron plate, Support work by bamboo. Photo in Oct 2, 2019
If you walk around the city, you can find the construction site everywhere. Some construction sites seem to be abandoned because all of these constructions are running all at once. Even Dhaka, where houses millions of people, lacks workers. Not only the rickshaw but also the concrete casting work is done by hand. The workers including women beautifully and robustly carry with mortar and aggregates on their heads.
Concrete casting by hand. Photo in October 3, 2019
Concrete formwork in Japan uses instrument panel of wooden plywood, but in Bangladesh uses reusable iron plate. And the support work uses bamboo. In this regard, the construction of Bangladesh is more ecological than Japan. Although it is a very primitive construction, the exposed concrete walls are generally done quite beautifully. According to Indian engineers, the quality of exposed concrete casting is better than in their home country. They can even make this kind of funky buildings with undulating exposed concrete walls.
Exposed concrete wall in Dhaka. Photo in Mar 9, 2019
Basically, the structure of concrete building is composed from floor slabs, columns and beams. Most walls except retaining walls, even the partition walls inside, are constructed from bricks. Using too much bricks is not ideal for environment. Because of the huge application of bricks at all construction site at once, the factory will burn them and emit enormous carbon dioxide. Brick production is one of the major causes of air pollution in Bangladesh. Not only trying to solve this environmental issue, but considering for structural aspect or its heaviness of brick wall, we proposed lighter material, concrete block (CMU) for our building, but our idea was rejected because CMU was rarely used in Bangladesh construction. Too expensive to use CMU.
Brick and Support Bamboo are piling up on the street. Photo in May 18, 2019
As for the automobile industry, Bangladesh is more environmental friendly than Japan because cars in Bangladesh run on liquefied natural gas. It is ironical that most cars in Bangladesh are secondhand cars run on LNG imported from Japan originally run on gasoline.
Hiroyuki Niino
