Project: CHAABI House
Design: SYSTEM Architects + EKNC
Lead Architect: Enamul Karim Nirjhar
Location: Rupganj, Greater Dhaka, Bangladesh (beside the Shitalakkhya/Shitalakha River)
Area: 1,035 m² Year: 2023
Award: ARCASIA Awards for Architecture 2025 — Gold (Single-Family Residential)

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Experience CHAABI House through a quiet, processional sequence from street to river. Cast-in-place concrete and warm timber define layered verandas, bridges and an open-to-sky water court that becomes the climatic heart of the home—cooling breezes from the Shitalakkhya, washing daylight through deep shadows, and softening the thresholds between inside and out.

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Planned as a series of courts and covered galleries, the residence choreographs privacy for family life while staying porous to landscape and monsoon light. Thick walls, deep overhangs and shaded circulation temper heat and glare; high apertures and the central court encourage cross-ventilation, creating a stable microclimate without theatrical gesture.

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Material restraint is deliberate: concrete for structure and thermal mass; finely crafted wood for doors, screens and soffits; stone and water to ground the domestic rituals of arrival, bathing and pause. The architecture reads as a continuous frame—rooms opening to gardens, terraces and the sky, with long views stitched across the plot.

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Details are precise but never precious. Stair treads hover, handrails are pared back, and fenestration is tuned to orientation. Daylight is filtered, reflected and bounced, animating walls through the day and giving the house its calm, riverine character.

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CHAABI House stands as a contemporary Bangladeshi river-edge home—climate-responsive, materially honest and deeply connected to place—earning ARCASIA 2025 Gold for its measured synthesis of structure, landscape and living.

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Architectural Photography by Asif Salman

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© 2025 | Do not use or publish these photographs without prior written permission from the photographer.