Exotica Maksud

Exotica Maksud
Simplex Multi-Apartment · Jolshiri Abashon, Sector 16, Dhaka · 2024

The facade of Exotica Maksud on Road 504, Sector 16 of Jolshiri Abashon is composed around a problem that residential buildings in Bangladesh almost universally avoid addressing directly: the toilet window. On most apartment buildings, bathroom openings are tucked to the side, screened by louvres, or simply left unresolved at the back of the plan. At Exotica Maksud, two toilet windows face the front street elevation, and 23/90 Architects treated that fact not as a constraint to be hidden but as an opportunity to be designed.

The response is a tall, narrow perforated plane of white concrete that rises as a single continuous vertical element through the full height of the building, from ground to roof. Its position is precise: it sits exactly in front of the toilet windows, providing complete privacy for the bathrooms behind it while allowing diffuse daylight and ventilation to pass through the perforations into the interior. The plane does not pretend the bathrooms do not exist. It acknowledges them, gives them a considered architectural resolution, and in doing so becomes the building's most distinctive vertical feature. Topped by a boldly projecting canopy that floats above the roofline, the perforated spine reads from the street as the building's central axis, giving the otherwise horizontally composed facade a clear vertical counterpoint.

On either side of this spine, the building's terracotta-toned panels and staggered balconies establish a warm, layered composition of projecting and receding surfaces. Each balcony is planted, its vegetation trailing downward and softening the hard geometry of the concrete and cladding behind it. The balconies step and rotate slightly between floors, creating a rhythm of shadow and depth that prevents the facade from reading as a flat stack of repeated elements. The building accommodates both single and double apartment units across 2,320 square metres, the floor plan organised to give each unit a generous balcony relationship to the street while the perforated plane guards the privacy of the service zones behind it.

At ground level, a landscaped setback separates the building from the street, its mature trees already established and providing shade to the building's base. The arrival is unhurried and green, a quality that the density of Sector 16's development makes increasingly rare.