The Panam Nagar Grammar

Panam Nagar is an early 19th century colonial settlement in Bangladesh. It was a famous trade center for clothes and crafts built by the merchants who presumably lived and worked there, and their colonial houses are the jewel of the site. Today, the settlement is dilapidated and needs preservation. The Government of Bangladesh has declared Panam Nagar a national heritage site, but budget constraints and other limitations have delayed conservation efforts. Before conservation or adaptive reuse, a thorough understanding of the site is necessary. Formal analysis provides a basis for successful historic preservation by contributing knowledge on the space and structure of the colonial houses, and their role within the urban settlement.

To develop a further spatial and morphological understanding of the settlement, this research will use the shape grammar formal methodology to study the inherent spatial quality of the consolidated-type houses. More specifically, the Panam Nagar Grammar aims to shed new light on our understanding of the settlement by unpacking how the houses support a merchant lifestyle characterized by domestic and commercial functions.