Bangladesh's climate-resilient 'tiny houses' defy floods

An award-winning architect in Bangladesh, one of the nation’s most at risk from flooding driven by climate crisis, has developed an ingenious two-floor housing solution to help people survive what scientists warn is a growing threat.

This year, when the annual monsoon floodwaters swelled the country's mighty Brahmaputra river, 40-year-old farmer Abu Sayeed did not have to abandon his home for the first time in his life -- but merely climb up a ladder and wait out the waters.

The "Khudi Bari" or "tiny house" -- resilient homes made on bamboo stilts rising out of the floodwaters that are also easy to move to safer locations when needed--offer hope to millions.

"Khudi Bari has saved us," Sayeed told AFP, who like millions, lives on Bangladesh's vast river floodplains because the fertile soil is good for the maize and chilli crops he grows.

"Fleeing your home during the floods is part of your life," said Sayeed, from the northern village of Shildaha, where 17 prototype Khudi Bari houses have been built by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum. "And often, when the floodwater recedes, you come back to see that your goods were all stolen," he added.

Bangladesh is listed as the seventh most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate crisis and rising sea levels, according to the environmental rights organisation Germanwatch.

A solution for Bangladesh's flooding woes

Scientists warn of the growing impact of climate crisis -- increasing the intensity of monsoon rains, as well as warning that ice in the Himalayas is melting faster than ever before. Floods in 2022 in Bangladesh's north-eastern Sylhet region were some of the worst on record, leaving millions stranded and around a hundred killed.

The government has built thousands of strongly built shelters for cyclones to withstand the severe storms that are also increasing in regularity.

But while reducing fatalities, cyclone shelters are suitable only for hunkering down during the short span of a storm. However, floods can swamp land for months.

Tabassum therefore worked to design a home for the "lowest cost possible for those in need", using locally available materials by combining bamboo poles and metal sheeting.

"It can be assembled and disassembled very easily," she told AFP, calling it a "climate preparedness" project, with each house costing around $450 to build, including labour.

"It's a mobile modular system, so that's why it can be moved from one location to another," said Tabassum.

Arman Abedin, an associate of Tabassum, said every four-metre-high tiny house has two floors, each 100 square feet (9.3 square metres).

A shift in housing paradigms in flood-prone areas

Mohammad Kalu, 35, who lives in one of the Shildaha homes on stilts, said the design meant people could easily adapt.

"If water rises to the chest or even cheek level, still we can stay in this house... we can go to the upper floor and cook with gas or firewood," he said."When the current is strong, we untie the tin walls and the water goes through our houses without any obstruction," he also added.

Tabassum said she was partly influenced by the traditional wood homes of Bangladesh's central Munshiganj, raised on stilts to allow floodwaters to pass under during monsoon season.

But Sayeed said the design meant the new houses -- with wooden stilts wrapped in metal covers -- were far easier to move than traditional constructions. "Now we don't need to buy new materials when we disassemble the houses," he said.

Tabassum is busy building more than a hundred Khudi Bari across Bangladesh to offer an example and inspiration for others.