MEASUREDTO THE MM
Twenty-one years of buildings in Dhaka that were finished on the drawing before anyone dug a hole.
Ishraq Haider
Architect · Dhanmondi, Dhaka
I trained at BUET and spent nine years in other people's practices before opening my own in 2014. The studio is six people. I still draw.
Most of what goes wrong on a site went wrong on the drawing. So the drawings take longer here than they do elsewhere, and the sites take less time than they do elsewhere. That trade is the whole practice.
Four kinds of drawing
- A.01
Residential
Houses and apartment buildings. Full service from the survey to the handover, including the parts most people find out about too late — RAJUK, utilities, the neighbour's wall.
- A.02
Commercial & retail
Offices, showrooms and mixed-use. Drawn so a contractor can price it accurately the first time.
- A.03
Interior & fit-out
Full interior packages with joinery drawn to the millimetre and a schedule your carpenter can actually build from.
- A.04
Drawing review
A second pair of eyes on somebody else's set before you build it. Usually the cheapest week you will spend on a project.
Three off the shelf
- P.001
A nine-storey apartment block
2024 — 2025- What we did
- Dhanmondi. A difficult corner plot with setbacks on three sides.
- What changed
- Eleven flats where the brief asked for nine. Approved first submission.
- P.002
A garment head office
2023- What we did
- Gazipur. Converted a warehouse shell into offices for 260 people.
- What changed
- Handed over four weeks early. Cooling load down 31%.
- P.003
A family house
2021 — 2022- What we did
- Uttara. Three generations, one plot, and everyone needed their own door.
- What changed
- Built to drawing with two site variations in fourteen months.
The contractor priced it in nine days because there was nothing to ask about. I have never had that before.
Client, apartment blockHe found four things in our previous architect's set that would have cost us a floor.
Managing Director, garments