INTRODUCTION : Whether the dwellers like it or not, whether the housing designers consider it as

ideal solution or not and even whether it is beneficial for the society or not, in the coming years we
shall find apartment buildings to sprawl up in all corners of the busy city at an ever increasing rate.
Even though some cases of burglary and crime have been reported in the well-guarded high-rise
apartments of Dhaka city, their number is too less in comparison to what now takes place in
independent and low-rise houses. Inspite of numerous problems, security is the first reason for which
the city-dwellers now prefer to live in apartments. After the dwellers complained against certain
developer firms for inadequate design considerations, the matter was referred to RAJUK (Ref. 01),
the organization responsible for the physical development of Dhaka city. Accordingly RAJUK
prescribed certain regulations obligatory for the design of high-rise apartments. Since then situation
has improved, but still today there remains two major problems in the fields of (a) Ownership of land
and (b) Maintenance. In case of the government developed residential areas, the government
allocates plot with 99 years’ lease, after which there remains no guarantee of ownership. In such
areas there are restrictions on building height, total number of living units per plot etc. For this reason
the developers cannot go for constructing gainful projects here. For this reason, they construct high-
rise apartment buildings mostly in private lands, outside such developed areas. In such areas land
ownership is maintained in terms of plot numbers marked in C.S. Map and documented as per
Mouza, J.L. No. and Sheet Number. The people are given ownership through a document called
Khatian. The Khatain records the identification and quantity of land, along with various taxes to be
paid. The name of the owner or owners along with their shares are recorded in the Khatian, but there
remains no indication regarding which part belongs to whom. When high-rise apartment buildings are
constructed on such a piece of land, the land remains in the name of the previous land owner, or in
the name of the developer firm. In the second case the developer prepares a registered document,
declaring equal rights of all the apartment owners on that land. Needless to mention that such an
inadequate and unspecified right of the apartment-owners on their land is sure to create problem in
case there is any dispute and specially, if the building is in need of demolition and re-construction.
Other than this, the major problem that the apartment-owners at present face is regarding
maintenance. This problem may, however, be avoided if some provisions are made and precautions
taken at the time of preparing the architectural design.

MAINTENANCE PROBLEM IN MULTI-OWNERSHIP HOUSING : In point of maintenance a multi-

storied building with a number of rental apartments is quite different from a high-rise apartment
building with multiple-owners. In the first case the owner of the building is authorized and responsible
for the maintenance of the entire building including re-construction, if required. But in case of the

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multi-ownership apartment building no owner is responsible for the entire building and land, and the
owners at times get confused about the extent of their respective rights and obligations. At the time
when multi-ownership apartment buildings were first constructed, there was no system of solid-waste
disposal and the users had suffered from the consequential problems. Later RAJUK prescribed for
keeping Garbage Chute in all buildings over six stories height (Ref. 02). Even though the provision of
chute has made disposal of solid-waste from the units, still much works need to be done in further
managing these wastes.

RAJUK has helped to solve some other maintenance problems like vertical ascent, delivery of letters
etc. by prescribing generator and letter-box obligatory in such buildings (Ref. 03).. With all these
provisions the maintenance works that the owners or the management still have to manage are : (a)
Security of the building and controlling people’s movement, (b) Disposal of collected solid-wastes,
(c) Ensuring water supply by operating the water pump, (d) Cleaning and maintaining the common
spaces, rooms and utilities like elevators, corridor, under ground reservoir, overhead water tank,
exterior space etc. (e) Payment of taxes and fees to government offices and utility providers, (e)
Minor repair works etc. Generally keep a small contingent of salaried men for these jobs and the
owners pay for the cost.

In Dhaka the high-rise apartments were constructed only in the eighties and nineties, such that major
works like demolition and reconstruction, change of external finish, replacement of pipes and cables
etc. did not still take place. The choking of waste-pipes, however, took place many a times resulting
in the worst suffering for the concerned owners. It may be mentioned here that in order to reduce
cost the developer companies use minimum number of intake and exhaust pipes. Similar is the case
with electric and communication cables. The architects keep ducts for housing these pipes and lines.
In some high-rise apartments the inspection doors exposing the ducts are given from outside, such
that the inside might look nice.

The apartment owners live in their units designed in the above principle. Now we shall describe
some practical problems from which some of the owner quite often suffer. Choking of main waste
pipe is not a rare incident in Dhaka. Most of the time it happens due to the ignorance of the maid-
servants of one single unit. Once such a pipe is choked, all the units linked with that pipe are
affected. The concerned owners desperately look for the cause, while others remain reluctant and
indifferent. Since it is not everybody’s problem, the management staff are not alerted. In such a
situation, finally only the affected owners get the problem solved at an exorbitantly high cost. The
workers cannot be blamed, because they have to take great risk and even break walls. We may
trace two probable reasons behind such sufferings, (a) Either the architect did not have the idea

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that these pipelines need regular inspection, or (b) They were instructed by the developer to keep
the project as less as possible.

There also arises difficulty in case of cleaning the stair-case, which in this case a common property.
Since the central cleaning facilities often fail to clean it, the owners themselves clean the part of the
staircase adjacent to their floor, as a result of which the owners at other levels complain.

The first look at the apartments constructed earlier, say, in early eighties in Dhaka city may reveal a
familiar scene, the lower-most and upper-most few floors have good exterior finish, while the middle-
part does not have any. Even Banyan plants might be seen in the mid-region of some of the old
buildings. When asked about the reason the owner might say, it happened so because it was
extreme difficult to clean those areas. Since this job is quite risky with the currently available
technology, the maintenance workers usually charge colossal sum for money for working in some
areas. While designing the building the architect probably forgot that in designing a multi-ownership
building he was designing properties belonging to not one, but many and his design should have
ensured equal privilege and responsibilities for all of them.

PROPOSALS TOWARDS SOLUTION : The problems so far mentioned may be categorized into
the following heads : (a) External Problems : Problem with maintenance and repairing works of the
exterior walls. (b) Internal Problem : Problems regarding repair, cleaning and replacement of pipes
and lines, cleaning of staircase etc. (c) Problem regarding ownership on land. (d) Demolition and
reconstruction problem. Even though none of these problems are beyond solution, some of the
owners at times suffer from a sense of ‘deprivation’ because of inaccessibility to their properties for
the purpose of maintenance. While the problems like ‘ownership on land’ can be solved by the
government by means of appropriate rules and regulation, the solution of the problems regarding
maintenance lies in the design of the building and can be solved only by the architects.

It is now quite evident that in order to ensure maintenance at fairly equal cost by all the owners, the
design-approach of a multiple-ownership housing will be quite different from and independent house
or rental apartment. It is interesting to note that nobody ever heard of any dispute regarding
maintenance of the low-rise housing beside public road. Here, the responsibility of maintenance and
repair work is clearly defined. The city authorities or the Municipality takes this responsibility of
bringing in the utilities near the entrance of the building. At this point they maintain a number of
junctions, where they fix measuring equipments or gadgets. After this junction or gadgets the
responsibility lies with the owner of the building. The case with high-rise rental buildings owned by a
single owner is similar. But in case of multiple-ownership high-rise housing there exists a large void
between the place where responsibility of the public services terminates and where the responsibility
of the private owners begin. Now the question is, with whom does the responsibility of the middle

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part lies ? We know this part consists mostly of water-supply pipe, exhaust water pipe, gas-supply
pipe, electrical line, telephone line, main water supply pipe to over-head tank etc. housed in vertical
and horizontal ducts. There is no clear definition, but definitely it belongs neither to the municipality,
nor to any individual owner. The architect, however, could easily solve this problem by designing
this part as ‘semi-private property’ with working facilities for the independent owners. Probably this
was not done do because there was no such precedence or the developer was more concerned with
profit-margin than the possibility of disputes among the owners.

In the principles described above there may be numerous design solutions to this problem. In Figure
No. 01 (Slide) we present a sample one to explain the principle. In this solution the ‘semi-private
property area’ has been shown as a controlled space in each floor. At the periphery of this space
there will be voids in the floor slab, through which the main service pipes or lines would run. While
the cost of pipes and lines in this part has to be borne by the owners, the municipal authorities may
be requested to fix their measuring gadgets in this space, such that the individual owners may get
connections and supplied from this point. This may change the current practice of arranging huge
number of electricity, water and gas meters at the ground floor entrance. In future, there may be
attempts to clearly specify the individual’s private property in terms of the vertical walls on all
directions and two floor slabs, above and below. After such a cubical space be defined for one
owner, the system can be further simplified by arranging the supply and waste-pipes of any unit to
run through peripheral ducts arranged within his ‘property-cube’.

As for cleaning the stair-case an additional chute with an in-take point at every floor may address the
present problem ( Figure No. 02, Slide). For easy accessibility or working facilities to some exterior
areas devices like hooks, operable grilles, floor projections etc. may be provided at suitable
locations. Provisions can also be made such that the external walls of the individual units could be
repaired or painted, while staying inside that unit and thus avoiding risky operations. If conceived at
the beginning it may not be difficult for the architects to make architectural solutions accordingly.

It is obvious that the developer company will not have any headache regarding demolishing and
reconstruction of damaged building. Since men do not have 100% control over nature, no one
should forget the possibility of damage due to hazards like earth-quake. In case such a damage
really takes place, it may be extremely difficult to collect all the owners in one table and have their
consensus for reconstruction. As a pre-caution, the buildings may be insured such that in case of
hazards, the owners may get financial help for such reconstruction.

One imminent question at this juncture might be, how could the west, who started using high-rise
multi-ownership high-rise housing much before us, could solve these problems. The answer is, in the

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west properties are no longer managed by the individual owner or group of owners. Those are
managed by large Real Estate Management Companies. In case our architects cannot produce
then in this country also the owners would have to surrender their rights and privileges of
maintenance to such companies.

CONCLUSION : The age of most of the high-rise apartment buildings in Dhaka city has not crossed
ten years, while the oldest one might have been hardly twenty years. While looking at a multiple-
ownership high-rise housing, the architect should not see what he finds now, but should also
visualize the scene after, say another thirty years. In that case, he might visualize the external walls
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of the 9 floor of a 20 storied building to be laid with marble stones, the 5 floor verandah with
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projection of green branches from carefully maintained plant boxes, the 7 floor to have been hidden
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by thick foliage of Banyan trees, the verandah of the 15 floor to have been converted in to a room
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and the sunshades and walls of the 13 floor to have vanished. Even such a scene might seem
better when the architect would look at the mammoth mound of rubble on the adjacent plot.
Reportedly, it was a twenty storied multiple-ownership building, that was damaged by the earth-
quake few years back and then the eighty numbers of owners could not arrive at a consensus to re-
construct the building. In case we want to avoid seeing such scenes in our cities in the coming days,
our architects would have to grasp the necessity and nature of multi-ownership high-rise housing
differently and prepare the architectural design solution accordingly.

REFERENCES :

01. RAJUK : Rajdhani Unnyan Kartipakkha, previous Dhaka Improvement Trust.

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02. Building Construction Act, S.R.O. No. 112, dated 18 July, 1996. Act 17(4) : In case of buildings
with seven stories or over, Garbage Chutes for disposing of different types of
domestic waste will have to be provided ( translated).
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03. Building Construction Act, S.R.O. No. 112, dated 18 July, 1996.
A. Act 25/1(a) : In case of buildings with seven stories or over, there must be
provision for elevators for vertical ascent ( translated).
B. 03. Act 17(4) : In case of buildings with three stories or over, letter box should be
provided at the ground floor entrance( translated).