Arshia Hatami

“Investigating the shipbreaking industry in Chittagong Bangladesh and its urban implications.”

We all know how ships are born, and how majestically nudged into the ocean, but what do we know about their death and decay? Today, a large number of end of-life-ships are sent to the shipbreaking facilities in Chittagong, Bangladesh, where a lack of enforcement of environmental laws and unsafe working practices make ship breaking one of the world’s most dangerous industries.

This project seeks to establish an architectural response to a landscape susceptible to redundancy through an extractive process. The architectures of industrial means are the primary agents in the erosion of the very terrain they dredge from. This begs the question - how might architecture be deployed in future to navigate these new industrial territories, so as to limit their reliance on the lands they inhabit?

The project offers development of the urban scheme to improve the social condition. A tailored strategy, which can be applied to the design and organisation urban spaces structure of Bay of Bangla in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Under the title “The beginning of an end”, the project looks at the end of life vessels presenting alternative approaches that encourage a new way of dealing with building stock. Proposing a new way of dismantling and reusing the material from the ships, making vastly improved recycling possible for most materials as well as a safe disposal for the rest. Creating alternative approaches that encourage a new way of dealing with the dead material. 

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