Hanging Gardens
Patenga Bangladesh, 2013


For the help with this project a special thanks go to
Rakal Chndro Nath, MD Jashim, Meherun Akter and Abida Jahan.
Climate change may prove to be the ultimate humanitarian disaster. Its immediate effects - drought, floods, rising sea, worsening storms - fall most heavily on those people who are already living on the edge of society.



Landless people who have fled from the countryside to the cities are a serious and rapidly growing social problem in Bangladesh. Many of them live on the fringes of society without permanent home or basic necessities. It is one of the worst things that can happen to all of us: to be uprooted from the place we live and forced by violence or disaster to flee for our survival.



Sometimes little actions don't mean much, but.....

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one whose location has not been definitely established. Because of the lack of evidence it has been suggested that the Hanging Gardens are purely legendary, and the descriptions found in ancient Greek and Roman writers including Strabo, Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius Rufus represent a romantic ideal of an eastern garden.

In Bangladesh everything seems to grow in the smallest crevice. The perfect place for new Hanging Gardens and an ideal place to make the most out of the small areas in between huts and houses.  










My idea was to create a flexible solution for growing different vegetable. The white plastic pipes were cut into suitable sizes.


The pipes were then decorated with the help from the participants of Floating Peers at Porapara Space For Artists.

In the city (Chittagong) I bought vegetable, such as chili, cucumbers, different pumpkins which I have only seen in Bangladesh and some more plants which I am not quite sure of the name. I also bought some fruit trees, three jasmine bushes and different seeds.





I got a lot of help from Rakal Chndro Nath and MD Jashim with installing the Hanging Gardens in Laldiar-Char area of Patenga. Without their help and their interaction with the people in the area, I am sure the project would not have happen.

When we started the plants were really small, but when they grow and give fresh vegetable, the green and ever-changing decorative facade will also give a refreshing shade from the sun's burning rays.