23I90
architects
Next Export Zone Ltd.
RMG Factory · Peyarabagan, Gazipur, Bangladesh · 2018
Next Export Zone is a readymade garment factory in Peyarabagan, Gazipur, and one of the rare examples of an industrial building in Bangladesh where the environmental performance of the structure is treated as a primary architectural concern rather than a regulatory afterthought. The brief was functional, a production floor for an oven garments manufacturer, but the design proceeds from a more fundamental question: what does a factory owe to the people working inside it?
The building is oriented north, placing the primary production facade in the orientation least exposed to direct solar radiation. On the east and west faces, where the low-angle morning and afternoon sun presents the greatest heat load to the building envelope, cavity walls are employed throughout. The air gap within the cavity acts as a thermal buffer, significantly reducing heat transfer into the interior and maintaining more stable working conditions across the production floor without dependence on mechanical cooling alone.
The south facade is addressed through a different but equally deliberate strategy. Large horizontal shading elements are positioned across this face at calculated intervals, their projection sized and angled to block direct sunlight from entering the building while simultaneously functioning as light shelves. Rather than simply excluding the sun, the shading elements reflect diffused light deep into the interior, delivering natural illumination to the working floor at angles that reduce glare and increase the evenness of the light distribution. The factory interior receives daylight without heat, a distinction that most industrial buildings in the region do not attempt to make.
The exterior material palette is exposed brick throughout, its thermal mass adding a further layer of passive temperature regulation and its warm, textured surface giving the factory a civic presence unusual for the building type in this industrial corridor.
