natinal assembly hall

the national assembly hall is located in dhaka, bangladesh. designed when the country was at a time of governmental uncertainty, the building untied the feuding people and united them under one roof. the assembly hall is massive in size and is made out of mainly exposed concrete.

evident in most of kahns buildings, the national assembly hall responds immensely to the surrounding culture. one of the noticeable characteristics of the structure is the marble bands that run vertically and horizontally across the structure. these bands run at increments of 5 feet for one main reason: kahn realized that in a day, the people of bangladesh could only pour five feet of concrete. without the bands, the structure would show the different levels of the concrete pours and the building would look unsatisfactorily constructed. the bands accomplish two things: 1) they establish a human proportion to the entire structure, and 2) they hide the imperfections of incremental concrete pours.

the main objective of the project was to focus on how the building is put together. from a single screw all the way to conjoining concrete walls, we were to understand and diagram how these structures were physically built. because my structure was finished almost 30 years ago, there was not as much specific information on the structural details as many of the other students had with recently completed projects. because of this, i was required to use my knowledge and conduct even more research as to how my building was constructed. although my drawings might not have been 100% accurate, i did learn a lot about how such a massive concrete structure would be erected and for this i am grateful.

i used a wooden formwork to pour the plaster to create the mold of my section cut (it was really messy because i had to pour in such a small crevice)

after the pour came out successfully, i set up a makeshift work bench in the garage to dremel the sides down to clear up any imperfections from the pouring

the model came out pretty successful as i was only showing one of the bays in order to signify the main structural elements incorporated (scale: 3/16" = 1'-0")

a main criteria for the project was to show how the buildings envelope and skin were structurally put together. with this, i wanted to show that in between the concrete there would typically be a layering of rebar to make it structural. for this i simply used paper clips

accompanying our model we were required to have a board showing the concepts and main structural elements of our building. these drawings were to be ink on mylar, which is quite tedious because the pen spreads very easily on the smooth finish of the paper