Oasis: Modular Green Housing Carved into Dhaka's Urban Fabric

In a city where 20 million people compete for every square meter, the most radical architectural gesture might be planting a garden on someone's roof. Oasis takes that idea and scales it into a full residential strategy for Dhaka: stepped concrete volumes wrapped in vegetation, organized around courtyards, and calibrated for passive ventilation in one of the world's most humid climates. The project treats density not as a problem to endure but as a spatial condition to design with, stacking modular housing units that trade vertical bulk for terraced green surfaces open to light and air.

Designed by Oyshi Fariha and Quazi Arnab, Oasis was shortlisted in the Plugin Housing Challenge 2020. The project targets unauthorized settlements in central Dhaka, areas where rapid urbanization has outpaced urban planning, leaving young professionals and students in inadequate living conditions. Rather than proposing demolition and replacement, the designers work with these sites, repurposing them through structured, eco-friendly housing that integrates green roofs, modular adaptability, and community spaces into a single cohesive system.

Stepped Volumes That Breathe

The aerial perspective reveals the project's core architectural move: staggering residential units so that each level's roof becomes the terrace below's garden. Concrete volumes step back as they rise, creating a cascading profile that allows sunlight to penetrate deep into the scheme rather than being blocked by a single monolithic mass. The sectional perspective makes the logic even clearer, showing how planted terraces sit between staggered floor plates, giving every unit direct access to vegetation and open sky. In Dhaka's climate, where heat and humidity dominate most of the year, this configuration is more than aesthetic. It is a thermal strategy.

The designers describe this through four conceptual principles: metamorphosing (adapting modular forms for organic flow), verdant integration (embedding vegetation and water features), aeration (ensuring cross-ventilation for indoor air quality), and basking (using diffused sunlight for optimal daylighting). These are not abstract ideas. They are visible in the section: gaps between volumes channel airflow, planted surfaces reduce heat absorption, and the stepped profile catches indirect light while shading lower units from direct sun.

Ground-Level Courtyards as Community Infrastructure

At street level, the tiered housing blocks frame landscaped courtyards connected by pedestrian pathways. These are not leftover spaces between buildings; they are deliberate programmatic insertions designed to foster interaction among residents. For a population of young professionals and students, spaces for gathering, studying, and socializing outside the private unit are essential. The ground-level rendering shows how the stepping of volumes also creates sheltered zones at grade, shaded pockets where vegetation and hardscape alternate.

The perspective from ground level looking up at the terraced concrete housing underscores how the green roofs register as a continuous landscape layer even when viewed from below. Residents walking between blocks see not a wall of concrete but a series of planted ledges that soften the built mass and reduce the perceived density of the scheme. It is a straightforward lesson in how section design shapes the experience of a neighborhood.

Rooftop Landscapes and the Logic of Modular Clustering

The axonometric drawings unpack the project's organization at two scales. The first shows a rooftop courtyard surfaced with gravel and planted beds, nestled between residential volumes. This is functional green infrastructure: the planted beds contribute to thermal insulation, manage stormwater, and provide a usable outdoor room for residents above ground level. The gravel surface keeps maintenance low while allowing drainage, a practical detail for a monsoon climate.

The second axonometric pulls back to reveal how multiple housing clusters aggregate into a neighborhood. Units are grouped around internal courtyards, each cluster maintaining its own planted core while linking to adjacent clusters through shared pathways. The modular approach means the system is inherently adaptable: clusters can be added, reconfigured, or phased over time as the community grows. For a site strategy built around reclaiming unauthorized settlements, this flexibility is critical. It allows the architecture to respond to existing conditions rather than demanding a blank slate.

Why This Project Matters

Oasis matters because it refuses the false choice between density and livability that defines so much megacity housing discourse. Instead of pushing residents into sealed towers or sprawling outward into agricultural land, Fariha and Arnab propose a middle ground: compact, stepped volumes that use every surface for either habitation or ecology. The result is a scheme where green roofs, natural ventilation, and communal courtyards are not amenities added on top of the housing but the structural logic that generates it.

For Dhaka specifically, the project's siting strategy is its sharpest contribution. By targeting unauthorized settlements in the city center, it addresses the reality that informal development is not a temporary condition to be cleared but a permanent feature of the urban landscape that requires architectural intelligence. Oasis demonstrates that modular, green, community-oriented housing can emerge from these very sites, turning liabilities into prototypes for a more resilient city.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Oyshi Fariha, Quazi Arnab

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Project credits: Oasis" for life in mega-cities by Oyshi Fariha, Quazi Arnab Plugin Housing Challenge 2020 (uni.xyz).