Study of the spatial organization of the rural homesteads in nowagaon, Sreemongal

Abstract

Bangladesh is a country of fertile land and alluvial soil, set in the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, which attracted early human settlements in this region. A large percentage of the country's population lives in rural areas, and a significant amount is involved in agriculture-based occupations. Rurality is understood by its remoteness from major population centers and its vast agricultural practice and unique society as its key attributes. In Bangladesh, statistics indicate a strong dependency of the country’s economy upon rural, but the rural socio-economic attributes are changing. Although slowly but gradually becoming popular, alternative livelihood options are some of the changes the rural economy is undergoing. The change in lifestyle of the rural people has impacted the built environment. With the change in social, economic & cultural aspects of the rural people, the rural homestead, or the built environment where the rural people live is changing. The spatial organization of the domestic space is influenced by the social, economic, and cultural attributes of the residents living in it. It is found that the spaces where the domestic activities of the rural household take place in everyday life constitute the rural homestead. A homestead has a tangible boundary. Productive activities and social interaction take place within the rural homestead domain along with the daily activities. The spatial organization is also a physical manifestation of the activity that encodes a wealth of social and symbolic information, constituting a shared framework of spatial patterns(Hillier & Hanson, 1984).The study aimed to investigate how the socio-cultural factors influenced the spatial organization of the rural homesteads and the consequent changes to trace the transformation of the rural homesteads. The research is conducted in the village of Nowagaon, which falls within Sreemongal Upazila, Sylhet Division. Due to the unique social, economic, and cultural conditions and different geophysical and climatic characteristics, Nowagaon village was selected for the study. The spatial organization of the rural homesteads of Nowagaon was studied using the Justified Permeability Graph of Space Syntax methodology, which generates essential data on how social meanings and lifestyles are expressed in spatial organization. The findings of the research showed that the general pattern of the spatial organization of the rural homesteads of Nowagaon, Sylhet are freestanding huts organized around the courtyard. Such a pattern of spatial organization is vastly due to the socio-cultural influence and the activities that take place in the different spaces that constitute the homestead. It is also found thatthe rural homesteads of Nowagaon are going through a transformation in terms of the spatial organization due to socio-economic changes. Some of the transformations the rural homesteads are seeing are changes in the house form and function, changes in functional arrangement due to privacy issue, change in the pattern of use of space, addition, and elimination of forms, and others. The patterns and the factors that influence the spatial organization of the rural homesteads are areas of rural architecture and settlement pedagogy that need comprehensive study. The research is expected to contribute to the understanding of the rural vernacular architecture of the region and document the rural architecture of Bangladesh Keywords: rural, homesteads; space syntax, spatial organization, spatial patterns; housing, Bangladesh.