Portfolio_Sheikh Rishad Ahmmad

RISHAD AHMMAD

Regementsvägen 4B

Helsingborg 254 57

SE

+46 762 35 33 91 aurnob.rishad@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/rishad-ahmmad

EDUCATION

Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet, Sweden I 2023-2026

Doctoral student (ongoing)

Research topic: Daylighting and electric lighting retrofitting in livestock buildings. Funded by EELYS program of Swedish Energy Agency (Statens energimyndighet).

Lund University, Sweden I 2020-2022

MSc. in Energy-efficient and environmental building design

Degree project: Security Lighting in Horse-riding Halls: Development of a Simulation-led Testing Methodology in VR. An SLU-LTH-RISE project funded by Swedish Equestrian Federation (Svenska Ridsportförbundet). Education financed by a Swedish Institute Scholarship.

Khulna University, Bangladesh I 2010-2015

Bachelor of Architecture

Thesis project: A vision for old Dhaka: Redevelopment of the old Dhaka central jail area. Education financed by Khulna University Merit Scholarship (2011-2015).

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Momax Arkitekter, Malmö, Sweden I 2022-2023

Architect

Trikon Architect, Dhaka, Bangladesh I 2021-2022

Associate Architect (Contract)

Porilekh Architects, Dhaka, Bangladesh I 2018-2020

Architectural design coordinator

Ahsanullah University of Science & Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh I 2016-2020 Faculty member, Department of Architecture

SOFTWARE PROFICIENCY

AWARDS AND HONORS

MAJOR ACTIVITIES

Drawing and visualization: Autocad, Sketchup, Revit, Rhinoceros 3D, Lumion, Vray, Enscape, Twinmotion, D5 render.

Building simulation: Climatestudio, Grasshopper, Open LCA, SAM, WUFI. Miscellaneous: Unity, Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office.

Finalist, Building4humanity International Competition I 2018

Winner, project published, DOT Student Competition I 2015

Finalist, Sthanik Student Design Competition I 2014

Berger Award for excellence in design I 2014, 2012

Head list award, Khulna University I 2013

Boshotbari book project, contributor (contextbd.com/urbanhousekhulnabangladesh-boshotbari-letter-8/) I 2020-present

In Love with Dhaka: The Cheerful Chaos, Poster, ARCASIA Forum 20. Dhaka (contextbd.com/in-love-with-dhaka/) I 2019

Cartoon Exhibition by Bangladesh Cartoonist Association. Gallery 27, Dhanmondi, Dhaka I 2019

Sustainable flood-safe home, project exhibition on the 8th ICBR International Conference. Lisbon, Portugal I 2018

Inktober Bangladesh art exhibition. EMK center, Dhaka I 2018

Master Class with Architect David Holm, Drawing public places of Dhaka I 2015 ‘Art of Existence’ with Fakultat Gestaltung, BAUHAUS Universitat. Gabura I 2013

Komstad residential extension

Professional project I 2022-ongoing

Borlänge horse riding facilities

Professional project I 2022-ongoing

Landscape design of Padma R/A park Professional project I 2021-ongoing

Beltola Lily Design Research Project I 2018

Historic preservation and landscape design of old Dhaka Central Jail Competition project I 2017

Competition project I 2022

Security lighting in horse riding halls: Development of a simulation-led testing methodology in VR Masters degree project I 2022

KOMSTAD

Residential extension

Professional project I 2022-ongoing

Responsibilities: Drawing, visualization

Project responsible: Mats Molén Momax Arkitekter

In the quaint village of Komstad, Skåne, this residential extension project aims to transform a traditional home. The existing white stucco plaster and grey roof structure will stand juxtaposed against a striking addition of black-coloured wooden walls and roofs, offering a dramatic contrast. The new extension comprises a two-story rectangular mass, featuring a family living space, a double-height formal living area, and a staircase leading to an upstairs bedroom. Additionally, the project includes the extension and reorganization of existing bedrooms and bathrooms, revitalizing the home for modern living.

Rishad Ahmmad I Portfolio

BORLÄNGE

Horse riding facilities

Professional project I 2022-ongoing

Responsibilities: Drawing, visualization

Project responsible: Mats Molén

Fojab Arkitekter

Momax Arkitekter (Sub-contractor)

Now it is clear that a new riding facility will be built in Borlänge. Construction will start in the spring of 2023 and the project is expected to be completed in the summer of 2024. The plans to build an equestrian facility in Borlänge have existed for a long time, but now the wait is over for the associations concerned; Borlänge riding club, Borlänge equestrian society and Rommehed’s stable club. It is now clear that a new riding facility will be built. The facility will be a boost for equestrian sports in Borlänge when both riding school operations and private training can take place in one and the same place. / borlange.se

PADMA

Landscape design of R/A park

Professional project I 2021-ongoing Responsibilities: Conceptualization, design, drawing, visualization

Project responsible: Rishad Ahmmad Trikon Architects

Rajshahi is the 4th largest city of Bangladesh with a population of about 700 000. However, it is a growing city following similar urbanization trend like Dhaka. Rajshahi has already started to face many problems due to lack of proper planning, maintenance and implementation of infrastructural developments. Among all these issues, scarcity of urban open space has become prominent.

The aim of the project is to develop facilities including beautification and reorganization to turn the park into a popular green urban centre. The program has been carefully developed to integrate the park into the urban clusters of the surroundings to make it accessible for the people of all ages. It is expected that with the construction and implementation of the newly designed park, it could turn into a landmark for the city providing tremendous opportunities for the city dwellers for recreation, exercising, promoting cultural activities or so forth.

Ongoing construction

BELTOLA LILY

Amphibious affordable housing

Design Research Project I 2018

Project team: Jayedi Aman, Rishad Ahmmad, Salma Begum, Nabeela Nushaira Rahman

‘Beltola Lily’ is a solution for an eco-affordable single-family house for the lowincome class of flood-prone areas in Bangladesh. The project seeks a resolve that is familiar to the inhabitants and disaster resilient by design. It is designed based on sustainable principles - Local, Modular and Energy-efficiency. Using recognizable architectural scheme and sustainable materials, reducing transportation, saving energy, favoring development of home-grown industry and over the life cycle of the building, attaining goals of sustainable architecture follows these principles. The project is shaped to allow free wind flow and amphibious to survive flooding, thus the concept – less resistance, more resilience.

Historic preservation and landscape design of

OLD DHAKA CENTRAL JAIL

Competition project I 2017

Project team: Rishad Ahmmad, Ishrat

Laila Nowrin

At present, the jail sits in the middle of old Dhaka covering an area of 38 acres. In contrast to the surrounding areas, the site has rich vegetation and a large amount of open space with water bodies. But, this potential of the site remains hidden to the general people. Besides that, the site houses some colonial buildings and some buildings as evidence of the political history of Bangladesh. Also, there is possibility of finding more historical evidence and remains of the old Afghan fort if the site is excavated for an extensive archeological survey. This rich landscape and heritage value of the site must be acknowledged, preserved and accessed by general people. Also, the site will come in hand with endless possibilities of solving relevant urban issues of Dhaka city and providing many desired civic facilities for the people of old Dhaka

Upon the completion of the project, old Dhaka can be relieved of some major urban problems. The redeveloped place can become important socio-culturally, infrastructure-wise and historically. It can contribute greatly in national and international context by upholding our heritage and history to the global community and create a strong and positive image of our beloved Dhaka city to the world.

Somewhere in between the broad-brush of urban planning and the specifics of architectural intervention, this project will contribute to create a responsive environment for old Dhaka.

HOME+ Neighbourhood for generations

Competition project I 2022

Project team: Rishad Ahmmad, Ishrat

Laila Nowrin

The HOME+ project aims to transform cold climate apartment buildings by addressing the lack of communal spaces and activities. The approach involves designing parasitic structures that provide new spaces for shared activities and interactions. Rooftops are converted into greenhouses, community spaces are created for socializing, and workshops are established for residents to learn new skills and hobbies. The structures’ design infuses an earthy tone with green spaces and plants create harmonious natural environment. The rooftops are transformed into lush gardens, providing fresh produce and serene spaces for contemplation and relaxation. The community spaces are designed to foster social connections and a sense of community, while the workshops enable residents to learn new skills, from gardening and cooking to crafting and woodworking.

Rishad

SECURITY LIGHTING IN HORSE RIDING HALL

Development of a simulation-led testing methodology in VR

Masters degree project I 2022

Human eyes as living optical devices can do amazing things such as being able to see to some extent in a moonlit night even though the illuminance is lower than 1 lux most of the times. However, this is mostly true when human eyes are properly adapted to the dark environment, which may take up to 30 minutes. The lack of adaptation time in low light conditions in a building during an emergency such as a fire incident or power outage makes it a difficult affair for the occupants to see properly and safely evacuate the space as soon as possible.

Sweden, being situated very close to the Arctic Circle, experiences early sunsets during a major part of the year. The absence of sunlight makes electric lighting in buildings more important even in regular working hours. Local horse riding facilities in Sweden require 300 lux of average illuminance in the horizontal surface of the building during general lighting condition and 5% or 15 lux illuminance for 20 minutes during emergency. If such a situation occurs during an ongoing sports event after the sunset, the building occupants must rely on the security lighting system to evacuate safely.

The main objective of the project was to develop a methodology to test if such a lighting condition is sufficient or not during an emergency. Although the building occupants include both humans and horses, only human visual perception was taken into consideration for this study. Testing how well humans can see in an emergency lighting condition in the case building in reality is a time consuming and costly affair. On the other hand, computer-based simulations and testing can be done in Virtual Reality (VR) in relatively shorter time and minimal cost. Furthermore, this opens up the possibility to develop several lighting design iterations and test them to achieve a comparative analysis. Therefore, the scope of the project was to adapt a simulation methodology and develop a VR testing methodology to test different lighting conditions of the Malmö Civila Ryttareförening building on human subjects. For the purpose of the study, it was hypothesized that the ability to locate objects in different lighting conditions in VR is proportional to the ability to see in those lighting conditions in reality.

While the requirement for security lighting is set at 5% of the required general lighting according to the handbook by Svenska Ridsportförbundet, some other guidelines suggest it to be 10% for certain critical spaces where there might be risk of injuries and accidents. The intention of this project was to test both requirements as well as the general lighting condition of 300 lux to make a comparative analysis. The existing general and security lighting conditions were simulated, and two optimized design iterations were proposed to match the 5% (15 lux) and 10% (30 lux) requirements. Simulations also suggested that the general lighting condition was in photopic adaptation range while the security lighting conditions were predominantly in the mesopic adaptation range. The general lighting condition along with the two security lighting design iterations were chosen as the final three test conditions. These conditions were then rendered from a fixed viewpoint as equirectangular images in a scientifically validated lighting rendering software. The renderings were used to create the VR environment in a game engine. Invisible game objects were programmed and placed inside the virtual environment that can be coupled with eye gaze tracking technology to determine if the objects were seen by the participants.

Final VR scenes

The test was intended to be a pilot study for future broader research and was conducted on nine participants for this project. The participants’ feedback suggested that they faced difficulty to locate distant objects, objects of specific colours, and objects in darker scenes. Their feedback was in line with the eye gaze tracking and object identification data gathered from the tests. The test data suggests that the participants could identify more objects in 300 lux and 30 lux environments compared to the 15 lux environment.

The results of this test indicate that the minimum requirement of 5% security lighting may not be enough for the participants to identify objects in a test environment. More test subjects and further work on the methodology is required to get a definitive answer. The project can be further developed to conduct broader research for different building types. VR technology has already showed great promise in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry, and the possibility to incorporate it in lighting design, simulation, and testing process is worth investigating. There are still major technological barriers to overcome, which requires intense research in the upcoming years.

PASSIVE HOUSE

Energy-efficient, moisture-safe, and thermally comfortable rowhouses

Academic project I 2020

Team:

Sheikh Rishad Ahmmad, Amna Pejdah, Sahit Trejo Montes

The project aims to present a conceptual design of two sets of row houses in a vacant site in Vipängen, Helsingborg. The main objectives of the project were to ensure an energy-efficient and moisture-safe residential unit that fulfills Passive House criteria, stays within the benchmark level of BBR (Boverket´s building regulations) and FEBY (Forum för Energieffektivt Byggande) while maintaining a high level of thermal comfort and architectural quality. The chosen climate of Copenhagen for the initial design was analyzed using Ladybug in Grasshopper to make initial design decisions. Energy simulations of the building were done in different phases using Rhino for 3D modeling, Climatestudio for energy simulations, and Grasshopper for analysis. The moisture-safety analysis was carried out using WUFI, graphs were produced by Matlab while thermal bridges were calculated using Heat2.

The results showed that the designed building successfully met the requirements of Passive House and all the relevant benchmarks. The simulations also indicated that the building was moisture-safe with an acceptable amount of thermal bridges. Further investigations were done to compare the results with another climate. For this analysis, the climate of Amsterdam was chosen, analyzed, and applied in the energy simulation for the building. Although the designed building fulfills most of the criteria in this climate as well, some issues surfaced while calculating the overheating hours. Certain recommendations were made that will help the building adapt to similar climates.

Ground

First

CHITTAGONG TOURISM COMPLEX

Code and Ethics: Design challenge through sustainable architecture

Academic project I 2015

Chittagong. Largest port city of Bangladesh. The city with the most per capita income, most national export and the least poverty and unemployment. Chittagong is considered as the most livable city of Bangladesh due to its higher standard of living. It is also the center of the major tourism attractions of Bangladesh. The proposed Asian highway runs through Bangladesh connecting the Northern and Southern parts of the continent and on its way passes the project site on the node just before the new Karnafuli bridge. The site in Chittagong is situated amidst the commercial belt beside the Karnafuli river. However, when the construction of the Asian highway will be completed, it will certainly add a new dimension to the land use pattern of the area. In that case scenerio, what will be the nature of a building on that very point?

The tourism of a place depends on what kind of tourist attractions are there- natural or manmade tourist spots, cultural heritage of the area and indigenous communities. Chittagong is adorned with two major elements of natural environment, sea and hill tracts. Cox’s bazar is the longest uninterrupted sea beach of the world. There are other major natural tourist attractions like the Saint Martin, the Kaptai lake, Khagrachori-Rangamati-Bandarban hill tracts, Himchori, Sitakundu etc. Moreover, Chittagong is also the concentration point of twelve indigenous communities of Bangladesh. Global tourist cities often create a tourism cycle with major tourist spots in close proximity with a city working as the focal point. As Chittagong division has a concentration of tourist attractions, it is very much possible to create a tourism cycle here with Chittagong as a central point.

For tourism to flourish in a country, it is most important to create a brand image of the place for the tourists. By creating a brand image, a nation can represent itself as an appealing tourism destination to the foreigners and thus helping tourism based economy to thrive. To create a brand image, from all aspects Chittagong has the capacity to become the face of Bangladesh tourism. In such a future scenerio, the authority of Bangladesh tourism will need a new ‘home’ to represent Chittagong as the new global city. From this aspect, the headquarter of Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation (BPC) was proposed to be placed on this site. With that as the primary program, a full-fledged tourism Complex to uphold Chittagong tourism was proposed. Chittagong now has all the potentialities to turn into the new global city of the world, and that might be the goal for Bangladesh tourism. That is where the project can contribute conceptually. All the global cities of the world each have icons to be represented by. The Petronas twin tower reflects the image of Kualalampur, whereas Eiffel tower does that for Paris. So the question is, what defines Chittagong?

A city always develops a certain texture of its own that helps to create a mental image of it. The built environment of the city creates a pattern, which is generally called pattern making architecture. To break this pattern, exceptional architecture is needed. When a pattern breaking architecture is created, it becomes a landmark. There may be numbers of landmarks in a city, but fewer can become an icon. This uniqueness comes from the iconic outlook of the building, its visibility, its boldness and its public image. To create this uniqueness was the primary goal of this project.

MISCELLANEOUS Professional projects

Horse stable in Everlöv 2023 - ongoing

stable in Grevlunda 2022 - ongoing

- ongoing

Horse

Torups slott storage shed 2022

Fulltofta boutique hotel 2023 - ongoing

Villa in Rörum 2022 - ongoing

MISCELLANEOUS Competition projects

Wine cultural center 2021

Institute of Engineers Bangladesh (IEB) 2017

monument, Dhaka University 2020

Sustainable flood-safe home 2018

Coordinated complex of department of public libraries & Bangladesh national museum 2016

Centenary

MISCELLANEOUS Academic projects

Public building energy use optimization

Master’s design studio I 2022

Office building renovation

Master’s design studio I 2021

A vision for old Dhaka

Bachelor thesis project I 2015

Participatory upgradation of informal settlement Bachelor studio project I 2014

I 2012

Post office

Bachelor studio project I 2011

Highway lounge and refueling station Bachelor studio project I 2013

City children center

Bachelor studio project

In love with Dhaka 2018-19

Rishad Ahmmad I 2024