Pages

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Lavasa becomes architectural testing ground for the fashionable new “science” of biomimicry

A new architectural science that mimics nature: hope or hype?

It may not even be the most sensible endeavour, but it’s what HOK, an American design firm, and the Biomimicry Guild, a “consultancy for bio-inspired design”, have set out to do at Lavasa, billed as “Free India’s Largest Hill City”
It’s been tried in a few parts of the world, but on a much smaller scale. The Swiss Re building in London, designed by Lord Norman Foster, is modelled on the structure of a sea sponge, with gaps in each floor creating shafts that ventilate the building. The Eastgate Center in Zimbabwe uses ventilation structures similar to those found in termite mounds.

In India, however, the goal is much bigger; a “bio-inspired city” has never been attempted earlier.

The guiding principles of the new science are fairly straightforward. Nature knows best; the “greenest” constructions are those that emulate natural design. The Biomimicry Guild believes that the way to making the city sustainable is to emulate the processes and design strategies of the moist deciduous forests of the region, which they say are “locally attuned, benign, interdependent and optimized”.

Shuttling between Lavasa and offices in Mumbai and St Louis, the architects at HOK have been working frantically to translate those principles into practise. Biologists from the Biomimicry Guild have been flown in from across the world; and extensive three-way discussions held between the unlikely combination of biologists, architects and HCC site engineers.

To read more, please, visit livemint.com

Related Stories:

1) Monday, November 2, 2009
The Times of India and Lavasa launch the Lavasa Future Cities Campaign

To encourage citizens' active participation in making a city ‘‘liveable’’:

2) Sunday, October 25, 2009
Lavasa to raise Rs 2,000 crore through IPO next year

3) Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Lavasa rocks with protests

India's biggest lake city project planned on 12,500 acres in the outskirts of Pune by Lavasa Corporation has begun to rock on a different note.

4) Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Most popular blogs of the week - 11Th to 18Th January 2010

5) Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Most popular blogs of the week - 4Th to 11Th January 2010

6) Friday, January 1, 2010
December 2009 - Top 10 popular blogs on Ravi Karandeekar's Pune Real Estate Market News Blog

Top Content - According to Google Analytics:

7) Saturday, January 2, 2010
Ravi Karandeekar's Pune Real Estate Market News Blog - 50 popular blogs of 2009

3,77,132 Thank Yous!

Subscribe for Free!

To receive free emails or free RSS feeds, please, subscribe to Ravi Karandeekar's Pune Real Estate Market News Blog

For my blogs on real estate projects near Hinjewadi, real estate investment, advertising and other related topics, please, visit and join my Ravi Karandeekar's Pune Real Estate Blog Group

1 comment:

  1. sovereignarchitects
    is also the best architecture, I have done some interior designing and now I feel happy.

    Architects in Pune

    ReplyDelete