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Surveying Our Villages

Posted by Timothy Chen on July 1st, 2010

The past month of work has been an eye-opening experience for me as I explore Panigram’s surrounding towns with my fellow interns.  My project for this summer is to collect baseline demographic data on these villages in order to better understand the community’s current condition—and its most pressing needs.  Since the Bangladeshi government has no demographic information (and not even any maps of the area), it’s up to us to do what in the United States would include census administration, map-making, and social outreach.  What our team is working on right now is the surveying: we visit villagers’ homes and go through a list of basic questions about household size, income, health, work, and education.  By obtaining a snapshot of the community’s current state, we hope to gauge Panigram’s impact in future years by comparing today’s data to subsequent years’.

Some of the villagers in our host community.

Some of the villagers in our host community.

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Resort Master Planning Under Way

Posted by Kristin Boekhoff on May 6th, 2010

Yesterday I met with my architect and got a sneak peak at Panigram’s master plan. I don’t want to give anything away yet (I will post the master plan online at the end of May), but I can tell you that there were some very exciting and surprising elements and that so far the concept is evolving to be even more magnificent than I had originally imagined! (Picture a hidden bamboo cafe, a secret garden, and meandering pathways punctuated by water features…)

I am going to Jessore on Sunday to buy the next piece of land for the project and to work with Marina to finalize the location of the Phase I buildings. We are on target to break ground the first week of June!

Our construction process will be well-documented this summer as I have a new crop of interns coming in. So stay tuned for more updates!

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August 14th - A Day of Trauma and Triumph

Posted by Kristin Boekhoff on August 29th, 2009

The Panigram Pavilion on the river at Panigram Resort.

The Panigram Pavilion on the river at Panigram Resort.

Koli and I sped down the road on his motorcycle in a torrential downpour. He had left our motorcycle helmets at the project site, so I held my hand over his eyes like a visor to block out as much of the monsoon rains as I could so that he could see well enough to keep us on the road. The van, holding three of my interns, two large blocks of ice, all of the cooking utensils from my kitchen, two gas stoves, and several pounds of food followed us. We got to the edge of town and saw that the road was completely blocked for repairs. While the motorcycle might have been able to squeak around the barricade, the van would never make it; fortunately Koli knew an alternate route out of the city. We were already an hour late: the van was delayed, our landlord had padlocked us in the building (it took us 20 minutes to find him and have him come open the door), and we had to stop at the bazaar to get ice. Read the rest of this entry »

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Taking Tea with Chi Chi: How to Motivate People and Win Friends in Bangladesh

Posted by Brian Grambow on August 3rd, 2009

Chi Chi Stands with her capentry team

Chi Chi stands with her carpentry team

No construction project every progresses according to plan; Bangladesh is no exception. Workers show up hours late, materials arrive of the wrong specifications, and the weather doesn’t always cooperate. As the architecture intern for Panigram, Chi Chi knows first hand the difficulties that arise during construction projects in Bangladesh.

Rising every morning at six A.M., Chi Chi faced the challenge of working with unfamiliar building materials, supervising her first construction project, and leading a construction team as a female in a male-dominated culture. Last night, I had the opportunity to sit down with Chi Chi and discuss the details of her pavilion project. We talked about her design, her team, and how she managed to overcome the many difficulties that arose while building the pavilion.

BRIAN: This is your first project, Chi Chi. Can you describe the challenges that you faced as a young architect working with an international crew?

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Two Cows, Four Interns, and 120 Cubic Feet of Mud

Posted by Brian Grambow on July 30th, 2009
Chi Chi stomping in the mud
Chi Chi stomping in the mud

The mud pit was empty, the rice straw hadn’t arrived, and the cows were nowhere to be found. When we arrived, we found our workers taking a prolonged smoke break, burning daylight with their tobacco with nothing to show for the hours they were supposed to have already worked.

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