WORK.LIFE: USC/Bhartiya City Studios

WORK.LIFE: USC/Bhartiya City Studios

THIS PUBLICATION IS MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF THE AGGARWAL FAMILY Designed at USC by Trey Anderson, Kim Coleman, Warren Techentin and Fernando Vargas Printed by The Pace Group, City of Industry, CA Copyright 2020 University of Southern California School of Architecture. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form without written permission from the publishers.

WORK.LIFE: USC/Bhartiya City Studios

Kim Coleman PROFESSOR

Warren Techentin ADJUNCT PROFESSOR

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CONTENTS 9

DEAN’S MESSAGE

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FORWARD

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WORK.LIFE: USC/BHARTIYA CITY STUDIOS

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PROGRAM BRIEF

21 LIVE FOR WORK Warren Techentin: Fifth Year Undergraduate Studio FLEXIBILITY LATTICE Nicolette Landucci, Andrea Mendoza, Ian Nally

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41 CLOUD CITY Benson Chien, Shi Yu Sissy Guo, Yang Chun Eugene Su

59 THE SOCIAL CONDENSER Matthew Chan, Morgan Feng, Arlyn Ramirez-Diaz

75 MULTI-USE MIXING Daqian Cao, Sarah Guan, Konrad Ka Chin Tai

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T HE INTERACTIVE STUDIO: MAKING THE GLOBAL LOCAL Kim Coleman: Second Year Graduate Studio

95 BANYAN TREE Danut Bidasca, Mengyu Wu, Yingtao Tao

107 BIO INCISION Kevin Klassman, Miguel Morgan, Robert Brooke Sadler

119 WEAVING LANDSCAPES Lucen Song, Yangxiaoxiao Li, William Anderson

131 A CITY IN A CITY Tsz Man Vincent Ip, Xiayi Summer Shen, Xiaoqi Chi Tang

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DEAN’S MESSAGE

USC Architecture is embracing the urban future - by intentionally embedding urbanism, urban design and urban histories and theories across all of our academic programs and curricula. A transformative curriculum on the urban future, supported by research, exhibitions, symposia and publications - will allow the school to make unique contributions to contemporary debates on housing and settlement, transportation, ecology and sustainability.

USC Architecture is also investing in bringing innovative thinking to questions of equitable urbanization and urban redevelopment of Asian cities. New methodologies need to be deployed to increase equitable distribution and access to public goods and resources, and diversify housing supply to address the cultural and economic nuances of regional populations.

We greatly appreciate the generous support of the Aggarwal Family for making possible the USC Architecture studio in Bhartiya City. We look forward to actionable research and thinking on India and urbanism – catalyzed by this initiative and partnership.

Milton S. F. Curry Dean Della & Harry MacDonald Dean’s Chair in Architecture

Left to right: Wong Chiu Man, Snehdeep Aggarwal, and Arjun Aggarwal

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FORWARD: The Origins of the USC Bhartiya India Studio We have been practicing architecture and design for close to 20 years in India -- a land of huge opportunities and never-ending frustrations. In our early years of involvement with clients and government agencies, we encountered great enthusiasm for new ideas and a thirst for growth and change. But, as with all developing economies, it has taken quite a long time to build up the end user awareness and the business and industry infrastructure to execute these ideals. It has only been in recent years that we have seen a new generation of developers and builders who are well educated and well travelled, and who possess the skills to really make significant changes in the built environment.

Bhartiya is such a group, and if we can say so, quite a maverick and forward thinking one. When we broached the idea of a design studio to test new ideas, the father and son partnership of Snehdeep and Arjun Aggarwal jumped at it with the same enthusiasm they bring to their development business. In the years that we have been involved with them, we have come to admire their tenacity and commitment to make a difference to the city and its people.

A quick overview of the Bhartiya philosophy and vision for the Bhartiya City Masterplan will help us understand the motivations of the Aggarwals, and why they are a natural choice for partnering with the USC School of Architecture. The motto 10

of Bhartiya City is The City of Joy. “Happiness is in the little things. Happiness isn’t momentary, it’s a state of being. Happiness is not an island. The more you are surrounded by happy people, the greater your chances of being happy.”

Snehdeep Aggarwal thinks of himself as the mayor of the city he is building. Not the developer. That task he leaves to Arjun, who has the enviable task of sharing his father’s vision, and also his financial backing, to build from scratch a community that will eventually house over 20,000 people and provide work, live and leisure spaces that rivals the offerings of the city of Bangalore.

“Bhartiya City should be as relevant in 2070 as it is today. This was among the key objectives we had set for ourselves as we began designing the city.

Sustainability was critical to achieve this. It had to be able to use resources wisely, and provide a lifestyle to our citizens that would continue to be benchmarks for the cities of tomorrow. The city had to be able to peer through the oncoming change, and be able to welcome it with open arms.” This simple statement established an ambitious brief to the consultant team and they have worked over the last decade to not only do the physical design and planning, but also the operational and social engineering needed to have ‘happy citizens’. In considering the design of the public realm and the interstitial urban spaces, the Masterplan addresses the core issues of poor urban infrastructure and WORK.LIFE

facilities management that plague Indian cities. By focusing on landscape-centric strategies and nurturing the connections between buildings and the movements of people, a ‘sustainable development’ approach was set as the basis for all the current and future phases.

I’m very grateful to Professor Kim Coleman, our teacher and friend from when Maria and I were students at USC, for helping us organize and teach this studio. It was a privilege and honor to return to our alma mater and bring the India connection to the school.

WOW Architects was brought on board more then seven years ago when I convinced the Aggarwals that the development of the various phases required continuous professional oversight. The various architects, engineers and allied professionals benefitted from a lead consultant that is essentially the “Guardian” of the vision. As Bhartiya City was built in an environment of quickly evolving and ever-dynamic market forces and global changes, the development team sensed a need to review the original programmatic assumptions made almost a decade before. Thus, as the lead consultant, I had the opportunity to suggest a research studio with USC as a way of studying these changes. Specifically, the Aggarwals were very interested in live/work, and work/live typologies and the lifestyle evolution that this would mean. Because much of Bangalore’s urban population is well educated and a human resource pillar in the international IT industry, the opportunities for providing safe, comfortable and life enriching high density vertical environments is a very logical development of the Masterplan vision.

This became the basis of the studio brief, and I know that the students’ research and project results were very well received by Bhartiya.

The students’ projects speak for themselves, and we look forward to the exhibition that will accompany this publication.

USC/Bhartiya City Studios

Wong Chiu Man + Maria Warner Wong WOW Architects | Warner Wong Design www.wow.sg

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The work of this publication was designed by eight teams of students in the graduate and fifth year undergraduate programs at the School of Architecture, University of Southern California, in Spring 2016. It features design proposals for a creative financial hub to be built in Bhartiya City, a new city currently in construction in Bangalore, India. Design strategies for the two-million square foot project explore typologies that provide a strong identity and sense of place and encompass a mix of office, housing, and retail functions, resulting in a mix of scale and use and a commitment to public open space. Led by Kim Coleman and Warren Techentin in conjunction with Chiu Man Wong and Maria Warner Wong of WOW Architecture in Singapore, the studios began the semester with a twelve day trip to India, researching the country’s culture and traditions. One of the many challenges of the studio was to identify key components of Indian society and propose forward-looking solutions.

The projects took as a starting point a Master Plan created for a progressive developer in Bangalore, the technological hub of India. The studio mission was to design a microcosm of the city – that not only provided for the space of work, but also the elements and amenities that a modern technology worker expects from his or her city today: a balance of open space, transportation, housing, shopping, schools, entertainment, and sustainability.

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The core mission of the studios was to explore new typologies of mixed-use and work-live spaces and reconsider the transformational impact of worldwide trends in outsourcing and telecommuting on the modern work place. Within the Master Plan, which includes extensive residential, retail and hotel developments, the developer sought an innovative solution for a financial hub that also creates a vibrant urban life, a mix of programs that enhance Bhartiya City as a whole, and new typologies of commercial spaces that will appeal to the progressive technology-based and other multinational corporations working in Bangalore.

An accompanying exhibition was on display at Verle Annis Gallery, Harris Hall, University of Southern California from September 6-9th, 2016 and is scheduled to travel to Discovery Center, Bhartiya City, Bangalore, in spring 2020.

Our thanks to Snehdeep Aggarwal, Chairman and Founder of Bhartiya Group, and Arjun Aggarwal, Managing Director, for their generous funding of the project, and for their invaluable time, insights, and hospitality. Also many thanks to G Raghavan and Shama Chanekar for their patience and continued information and support.

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BHARTIYA CITY DESIGN STUDIO PROGRAM BRIEF

A. INTRODUCTION The Bhartiya City Master Plan was designed for a progressive developer in Bangalore, the technological hub of India. Within the master plan, which includes extensive residential, retail and hotel developments, there are two plots of land originally planned to be a mix of retail, offices and hotel. The developer seeks an innovative solution that creates a vibrant urban life, a mix of program that enhances the overall Bhartiya City, and new typologies of commercial and live-work spaces that will appeal to the progressive technology-based and other multinational corporations working in Bangalore. The development should be both a creative hub, as well as a center place of urban life in Bhartiya City.

B. KEY ISSUES

1. Socio-economic context

India is country with a long history and rich traditions, often specific to each region and social class.

While they are firmly rooted in the past, Indians are also highly entrepreneurial people with progressive outlook on economics, technology, science and politics. It is also a nation of 1.3 billion people representing over 2000 ethnic groups, 20+ officially recognized languages, and contrasting cultures.

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India is a highly complex and rich society, and one of the key challenges of the studio is to identify key components of this society that will influence how people will use and occupy the project. We encourage you to think broadly but propose solutions that are specifically Indian and looking forward to contemporary Indian society.

2. Urban Place-making

The central tenet for Bhartiya City is to create a new typology of mixed-use development that is well connected, pedestrian-friendly, safe for children, full of life, and enhanced by landscape. The walk-able city concept is unique in modern India, which suffers from inadequate infrastructure and poor public spaces.

Your designs have the opportunity to add and enhance the public spaces that have been planned as part of the larger master plan. While the other areas of Bhartiya City are focused on entertainment and residential amenities, the public spaces surrounding the subject site should be about fostering creativity and a healthy and productive work life.

3. Evolving Trends in the Workplace

Led by the new technologies such as mobility, 15

artificial intelligence, and robotics and by worldwide trends in outsourcing and telecommuting, the modern work place is undergoing some radical transformation. This is true in India, as much as it is in Silicon Valley, which Bangalore has strong ties to.

Client. Each student’s project will be be evaluated both for conceptual rigor and design innovation, as well as real-world adaptability, and the Client team will participate in critiques and reviews of each team’s project at several points during the semester.

C. PROCESS

E. PROJECT DATA

The first part of the studio is research-driven, beginning with a 12-day excursion through India, including visits to the site. Students are expected to develop their own analysis of the site and the relevant socio-economic issues, which will be the basis for the students’ proposals on program and typology.

1. Location:

Bangalore, India (13.082521, 77.642794)

2. Site Area:

• Wing E – 125,345 sq-ft • Wing G – 195,558 sq-ft • Landscape Zone – 175,634 sq-ft

Each team of three students will develop a unique approach to the Master Plan. Students are encouraged to document every step along the say and include all types of research and design.

The final requirements include the following (but are not limited to):

• Site analysis & typology research • Concept statement • Diagrams • Plans, sections, elevations • Physical model • Digital model w/ animations/renderings

D. REAL-WORLD APPLICATION While the studio’s aim is to question conventions and propose new concepts of the workspace and urban living, the long-term vision of the project is to provide an architectural solution that will create meaningful spaces for real users, be commercially viable, and create a brand-building icon for the 16

3. Gross Floor Area: • Wing E – 1,124,850 sq-ft

• Wing G – 1,378,571 sq-ft

4. Height limit: 102 m

F. PROGRAM AREA The exact program is to be proposed by each team as it relates to their overall concept, following the initial site analysis and research on typologies.

However, given that there is already a significant residential component and retail mall already under construction, the focus of the project should be on the workplace. A sample distribution of areas: 15%.........................Retail 30%.......................Traditional office floor plates 30%.......................New work space typology 15%.........................Live-work typology 10%........................Hotel Any residential program should be of a hybrid type mixing work and urban living. Students should study WORK.LIFE

the existing distribution of program in the larger Bhartiya City and propose a complementary set of program focused on workspaces.

4. H eight—Because this development falls within a flight path, the building can be no taller than 105m above the see level. The maximum height measures to the top of any roof structures, including lift machine rooms, exit stairs, mechanical equipment, and penthouses.

5. Fire Egress—Every floor must have a minimum of TWO fire-rated escape stairs (minimum 1.2m clear width) and the stairs must be located as to keep the dead-end travel distance at 22.5m.

6. Realistic structural systems, with consideration for column grids, spans, cantilevers and transfers, should be integrated into the design strategy.

Potential tenants of the commercial spaces include:

• Technology companies • Multinational companies looking for headquarters in Bangalore • Other local businesses • Various retail tenants

G. TECHNICAL CONSTRAINTS As this project is based on a real site, real Client, and real socio-economic context, your design solutions must work within the basic planning restrictions:

1. Buildable Footprint—The building footprint is defined based on the existing roads, water bodies, and other site features. The building envelope must reside within the setbacks, with minor exception for roof canopies, façade features, etc.

2. Setback Between Buildings—Buildings must be separated from each other by ½ of the height of the tallest building. While towers can be joined to create a larger structure, at least 1/3 of the floors must be joined to qualify as a single building and not be subjected to the setbacks.

3. Fire Tender—A 6-m-wide zone must be designed around each building, on at least ¾ of all sides, so that a fire truck can drive up next to the building and fight fires. This “Fire Tender Lane” must accommodate a 6-meter turning radius.

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LIVE FOR WORK

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LIVE FOR WORK

Warren Techentin, Adjunct Professor

Business life is changing radically. Freed from the need to be tethered to a desk by instantaneous communication, workers today are mobile and able to maximize their productivity through the management of their own schedules. Time has become elastic as the 8-hr work day stretches out to include meetings, work related events, and answering emails on into the evening. This expansion of the work day – while still 8 hours - allows the work day to be broken up to allow interactivity between personal life and work life – use of the gym, a haircut, a visit to the dentist, errands, a yoga class, etc.

An often cited cliché in business is the value assigned to “water cooler” moments in the work place: the recognition that ideas and creative moments are more likely to happen through casual conversations in the breakroom than sitting at a desk alone. This recognizes the value of “lateral” thinking and tangential events which might help open alternate perspectives. This recognition is particularly evident in the information technology sector which has experimented with a host of alternative programming to invade the work place in an effort to simultaneously capitalize on the potential for lateral thinking while also providing a better workplace to entice and keep workers at companies longer. Because of this, businesses can no longer be bracketed off or zoned apart into discrete “business districts” or countryside commuter campuses but need to be immersed in 22

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robust, urban environments which allow for interactivity and a balanced work and personal life.

The following four projects explore the idea of life lived more intensively and interactively along-side work. Students from my studio began with research into company towns – towns where people both live and work in some form – the campuses of Google and Apple, British colleges, German and Russian Werkstadts, the factory towns of Ford motors, mining towns in Brazil, and “utopian” communities – each time looking for signs of interactivity and immersivity of personal life into work life.

While very different from these precedents, the projects you see here both embrace and document the same live-work business ethos you see in multi-national companies today; where workers are enmeshed in the global flow of all the reports, business meals, conferences, consultants, meetings, events, and travel this suggests. Indeed, the developers who invited us to propose schemes for their site wanted us to explore new typologies of mixeduse and work-live spaces – to reconsider “the transformational impact of worldwide trends in outsourcing and telecommuting on the modern work place”. The master plan they gave us, explicitly sought to blend residential, retail and hotel developments with the office space. the developer and sought projects which delineated new typologies USC/Bhartiya City Studios

of commercial spaces that appeal to the progressive multinational corporations working in Bangalore which would also provide a mix of programs which would stoke a vibrant urban life.

The students – who journeyed to India as part of the studio to immerse themselves in the contemporary Indian city – embraced the idea of travel itself as part of the concept. Architecture indeed plays a role in how businesses present themselves.

But within the framework of travel, competing impressions for the language for architecture emerge.

How can design strike a balance between the realities or widespread global building construction, the rich traditions of India and the expectations this creates, and the need articulate sustainable, contextually driven responses to how to respond to the unique environment of Bangalore and Bhartiaya City which was already under construction? The work here documents four groups of students’ wrestling with complex and competing sets of forces residing somewhere between pragmatism and expectation.

The journey to Bangalore was profoundly influential and in my view, each project acknowledges and incorporates the liveliness and richness of the Indian city we experienced in a way that would not have been possible otherwise had we not made the journey. We are deeply grateful.

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FLEXIBILITY LATTICE

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FLEXIBILITY LATTICE

Nicolette Landucci, Andrea Mendoza, Ian Nally

In the past decades, India has quickly come up in the world, establishing one of the largest tech industries on earth. Although this trend has led to many other improvements in India, this rapid development has also taken a toll on the quality of the architecture and construction. We noticed during our travels that many buildings were left partially constructed, poorly maintained, and were overall in a state of disrepair. We focused our design around these issues of entropy addressing ongoing changes in maintenance and occupancy that buildings in India are subject to. A variety of methods exploring flexibility were studied and used. Through relocatable partitions, panelized systems, and kinetic structures, our architecture responds to the changing needs of users on a daily, monthly, and yearly schedule. These features not only make the building relevant on opening day, but also ensure its viability in the years to come.

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Site Strategy

The site lies halfway between the airport and the center of Bangalore, and will - in the next decade or so have a major road cut right through the middle of Bhartiya City. For our scheme, we imagined that the road would be depressed and then ‘decked- over’ allowing a green-way to join the two sides of Bhartiya. Our buildings developed a north-south ‘grain’ allowing circulation through our site and buildings to this greenway and to Bhartiya south.

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Program Distribution

Two major circulation paths define the scheme. One - an extension of the major thoroughfare from the site to the north - is bordered by a large 110,000sm building of flexible business programming. The other path - to the western side of the block - subtly transitions between indoors and out through retail programming mostly in support of the educational and hotel programming located directly above.

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Flexibility of Use

A number of typologies were studied to find ways of supporting flexible use for the primary program elements of our scheme: financial uses, a hotel, retail, and a satellite business technology school. How can office space be ‘disaggregated’ and ‘atomized’ to allow shared use or unconventional leasing strategies while at the same time promote richer connections and less redundancy? We studied flexibility in the hotel and the retail uses as well.

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View from the South-West

Together the form of the buildings, though large, reinforce and support the passageways throughout Bhartiya City - making connections with the other parts of the community as well as making this block a convivial urban environment which responds with variety and change to daily life that carries on within it.

These buildings are not surrounded by manicured lawns but instead seek to become the center of activity and participation in Bhartiya City.

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Business Block Schematic Plan

The financial services building is the cornerstone of the scheme. It contains 110,000sm of space for companies of all sizes. A simple, Cartesian grid system composed of two differently scaled modules allows virtually any combination of office programming to exist. Doors, partitions, and even floor-systems can all be snapped into place.

Conference rooms at the edge easily slide on tracks to allow for shared use.

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Business Block Section

The building has a deep section the center of which is not defined by circulation and service cores typical of most towers. Instead, cores are located peripherally to allow for as much contiguous floor space as possible. Modular floor plates allow for flexible use in section as well as in plan. The outer, tighter grid of the structural frame allows parts of the program to be mobile and modular as well as providing sun-shading for the work floors.

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Layered Business Hotel

We presumed that Bhartiya City and a financial services district more generally would see many international visitors as Indian companies attract more investment.

As a gateway to the site, the hotel forms a series of public spaces nested within courtyards at different levels. These courtyards take you via passageways and bridges to other parts of the site. the hotel also contains convention and meeting spaces to bring people together.

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Bangalore Courts

The hotel is composed of 1000+ rooms designed in a way to allow the building to have relatively thin building profiles. This allows for the reduction of mass overall, but also allows for healthy living benefits like cross breezes in all of the rooms.

The rooms are also aggregated in a way that forms a series of courtyards. The courtyards are developed on multiple levels and allow a number of different programs to be joined.

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Hotel Section

A cut through the main courtyard reveals the courtyard’s indooroutdoor character and the life which unfolds at multiple levels. Here it becomes difficult to determine what “ground” might be as you are lost in the interlocking layers of the hotel’s architecture. All of these spaces are supported by landscaping and structured gardens which create outdoor living rooms. The deep sections help keep the spaces shady and cool.

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Varied facades and sections

Although an architectural strategy to allow a school to be visually identified within a larger building would be important to any school, for a school like MIT - famous for its economics departments - visibility will inspire the whole district. We propose different facades systems within our strategy and in particular here - a system composed of ultra clear glass - to allow these programs and the idea of extended learning to be seen by all.

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School as Social Condenser

The school is at a crossroads in the building as opposed to a terminus.

Circulation passes through it and a number of programs which could be enjoyed by all allow for interaction with students and faculty but more importantly, these ‘shared’ spaces become places where people from the neighborhood have an opportunity to meet and get to know each other.

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MIT Business Technology School

On another part of the site, and In an effort to develop a diverse and unique environment allowing for a variety of uses - and consequently the possibility for life on the site to extend beyond routine business hours - we looked for synergistic relationships with sympathetic institutions. Here we developed a part of a building devoted to financial services to host a satellite school of the Massachussets Institute of Technology.

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CLOUD CITY

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CLOUD CITY

Benson Chien, Shi Yu “Sissi” Guo, Yang Chun “Eugene” Su

Cloud City develops a conversation between modernity and cultural conformity.

In its most basic arrangement, it is a layered project whereby each plane signifies a parallel world composed of programmatic and iconographic objects. The urban, ground level is inspired by informal settlements organized around a main pedestrian walkway - inspired by the ideas of porous boundaries discussed by Kevin Lynch. The main mass of the building contains office space intermingled with iconographic amenities. In an era dominated by electronic technologies that elongate the work day, the office within Cloud Cities attempts to hold amenities accountable through its iconographic properties. The roof condition treats these iconographic amenities as standalone pavilions that can be easily perused. In its most simplistic form, Cloud City harbors multiple fragments of utopias in the air while connecting it to its urban environment through thin strands of circulation.

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The Cloud in the City

The block in which our scheme lies is at the center of Bhartiya City.

We imagined the future roadway might be much like the many other roads we saw in India where large thoroughfares of traffic are bordered closely by program. Our building would be both a gateway and center for Bhartiya and in that way, operates as an icon for the entire development. Not quite a piece of ‘starcitecture’ - but something large which draws the neighborhood.

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Programmatic distribution

The building is host to numerous programs and becomes both the business and entertainment center for Bhartiya. Retail uses blend with the street at the base. Small offices intermingled with gardens wind upward amongst columns above the retail to the offices. The upper half is defined by modularized and flexible office space which ‘steps’ in section to remove segregation between floor plates typical of office highrises. The top is for collective use.

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Idealized view of public programs As our building is intended to become the center for all of Bhartiya - after all, the site is fairly far out of town - a number of additional programs are necessary to make living in Bhartiya interactive and fun. In a manner similar to the way carnivals and fairs are laid out, we imagined a set of programs laid out openly upon a plain - not along streets which takes advantage of the dimensions of the block it is on.

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Plan Oblique at the Ground Floor

Because the building is the center for both the business and entertainment in the neighborhood, four levels of retail and restaurant programming is established at the base. Inspired by some of the ancient cities we visited in India, the form is ‘intuitive’ and informal and is nearly chaotic with its distribution of programs as the programs are not strictly located along the main promenade, but sprawl and are heaped on the various floor plates.

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Plan Oblique at ‘the gardens’

In the forest of columns required for the office and entertainment programming above and the retail uses at the base lies a number of ‘closed’ office programs set within gardens. Largely empty to allow light into the shopping areas of the floor, this part of the project is meant for smaller business who want a pedestrian, ‘walk-up’ feeling, the discrete offices are surrounded with plantings which help soften the effect of the light streaming in.

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Plan Oblique at the Open Offices

The office floor plates are nearly four times larger than a conventional office tower - allowing larger institutional programming as well as boutique offices. As multiple cores are necessary to handle the circulation to the upper floors the center of the building contains a number of reflective ‘holes’ which help bring light into the middle of these floor plates as well as to the programming below. Offices allow for easy circulation between floor plates.

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Plan Oblique of the Roof Top

The top floors contain a business hotel allowing for both short and long stay accommodations. The hotel has long been a positive urban ammentiy and often act as quasi-public living rooms. Here, the rooftop contains myriad programs which are managed and used by the hotel, but also by the building below and Bhartiya more generally - bringing people together to share in what they do.

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Section Oblique

Another view of the spaces between office blocks.

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Section Oblique

In this section, you can see the office programming organized into blocks which shift in section slightly from structural bay to structural bay and cascade between the floors. Non business and eccentric programs are placed within the commercial floor plates and are accentuated by their easily identifiable iconic forms.

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Idealized Elevational Detail

What does a progressive architecture in India look like? And how do we reconcile the impact of what we have seen during our trip to India - if at all?

The form of our project endeavored to manage certain themes from the past and present simultaneously: a sense of pervasive urbanism, arches, columns, patterned walls and floors, colors, and the sense that buildings do not have the same tightly defined relationship between program and wrapper.

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Idealized Elevational Detail

Part of eliminating the perception of the often cited brutal mass found in megastructures, is eliminating the sense of endless repetition. Given that this building consumes the entire block, various facade strategies were deployed to help reduce the sense of the building’s mass - to give it the feeling of having developed over a number of years as well as to stress the idea that architecture is not a singular thing, but a collection of pieces - an urban agglomeration.

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Movement of Office Workers

We imagined an idealized day in the life of fictional workers: how might people use this building? From their office, a worker might climb to the roof for lunch, or for some exercise. Perhaps later they attend a conference in the ferris wheel.

It is almost certain many trips to the ground floor for coffee or tea will keep people moving around.

We hoped to develop a few select intersections for people to meet as friends or as new opportunities.

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THE SOCIAL CONDENSER

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THE SOCIAL CONDENSER

Matthew Chan, Morgan Feng, Arlyn Ramirez-Diaz

The Bhartiya city financial district serves as a model that provides a series of programmatic prototypes that foster a culture of entrepreneurship through the promotion of interaction between businesses of various size –from that of a big established company to the level of a start-up –by introducing a number of “social condensers” which bring people together and promote interaction with the goal of exposing local Indian brands to an international audience. Contrary to the rest of the development –where different programs are clearly segregated to a defined sector –the financial district will promote the “overlapping” and “blurring” of programmatic elements to encourage the interaction and contribution of users with similar agendas. This intersection happens through the hybridization of elements into new programmatic prototypes while at the same time organizing work space adjacencies with spaces that have high social interaction.

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Urban Diagram

Given that a number of adjacent blocks are open, we expanded the boundary of our site to include the designated as business programming to the immediate west. Poised at the center of Bhartiya City, there are a number of opportunities for this site to become a kind of “central square� where all people pass through.

Passageways generated in our scheme extend outward creating connections over the future freeway cutting through the site.

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New Business Environments

We looked at new business models as an opportunity to modify the more conventional commercial leasing planned for the block. How do investors find Indian businesses? We explored how the architecture itself could help generate new business through proximity and adjacency.

Chance interactions would allow for introductions - made more likely through a series of social condensers we have planned throughout our project.

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Water Cooler Synergies

They say more ideas, invention, and progress in business have emerged through informal conversations around a proverbial “water cooler� than through any comparable structured methods. We looked at the architectural components of office space today and wondered if there were more of these types of social condensers which promote interaction: could each component piece be placed in such a way to sponser this kind of lateral thinking?

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Ground Floor Plan

Retail and business intermingle on the ground floor. Part of sharing a brand is creating familiarity and through strategic retail alignments, a business could foster a kind of community awareness of its products and services. In this plan, we explore the subtle relationship between retail and business space - allowing the topography to help make some of the connections.

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Typical Plan at Business Levels

The thin floor plates of our buildingsbased on contemporary German codes of 10 meters which allows for fresh air and light- bring business and circulation in close proximity and allows for smaller office space overall. In each of the buildings, we designated some spaces for “shared work� businesses or clubs which help to manage relationships between their different members making introductions and helping to efficiently distribute resources.

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Rooftop Plan

What if each business had immediate access to an outdoor garden space? For us, the rooftop was used as another type of “condenser� - terraced to allow each floor to have more or less direct access to it. Once on the roof, you could circulate up or down to other floors...to take a private call on your cellphone, to get some exercise as you go to the ground floor for tea, or to have a buisness strategy meeting.

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Transverse Section

The thin floor plates allow for fresh air and more light to the “Class A” offices within. When these thin blocks are configured strategically in plan, courtyards are developed, creating privacy gradients and allowing concepts of districts or ‘neighborhoods’ to develop.

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Section through the Cascade

The terraced floor plates not only allow offices access to the roof, but also to a double height interior terraced space that ascends and descends the building - in many ways acts like a street. As a natural aggregator it is also where we have located a number of our “social condenser� strategies.

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Partial Elevation and Section

Large spaces punctuate the regularity of the facade - as do the terraced spaces. Greenery would be interspersed throughout the complex and in addition to the courtyard and rooftop spaces is intended to be subtly introduced in the the vertical sunshade elements themselves. In this image, large floor plate office spaces are positioned under district courtyards.

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Perspective View from the North

The terraced rooftops add a complexity to the skyline of Bhartiya City: the buildings are both taller and shorter than the buildings around them due to the changing roofline.

The winding configuration of the thin office programming allows moments from one view where the masses seem large - like American style office buildings- yet from other directions they become thin and light.

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View from a Courtyard

Despite the size required of our buildings to contain the necessary programs, we developed the architecture to be layered and porous allowing views through and beyond wherever you are. The layered feeling reinforces our strategy as a social condenser as it allows a level of transparency into the activities and events happening throughout the development.

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MULTI-USE MIXING

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MULTI-USE MIXING

Daqian Cao, Sarah Guan, Konrad Ka Chin Tai

Our project is driven by the idea of being a central node to link the rest of Bhartiya city, centralizing as many programs as possible into our site.

Urbanistically we use the ground plane to connect to Central Park, Pencil Park, Nikoo homes to the north. The landscape is open and continuous with shopping kiosks and flexible space for vendors. The intention is to perpetuate ground activity to draw people to the site. While the central core in Wing E is the main circulation for the building, it also fosters new programs and amenities to facilitate movement throughout the building and between the hotel, school, and the live-work programs. Collaboration is necessary for the success of any business and Wing K encourages this between typical office typologies and new office typologies we imported through perimeter circulation connected to extra amenities such as cafĂŠs or game rooms.

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Bhartiya and Beyond

In the existing Master Plan, we noticed that a number of open spaces have been planned for Bhartiya, but they seemed isolated and disparate. We wanted to use our site - which lies at the center of the development - as the connective tissue to connect all open space in a way which fosters the feeling of a neighborhood. Our promenade, and the interiors of our buildings gather and connect the adjacent spaces together.

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Mixed-use Programming

Our programmatic strategy was to take the given program requirements for a hotel and financial services office space with opportunities for new business uses and a school, and ‘shuffle’ them as much as we could to help promote diversity and discovery as people moved from one programmatic area to another. Unlike the single use buildings surrounding our site, our buildings would be as mixed in use as possible to promote a creatively diverse urbanism.

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The New Office

We accommodate as many different types of business models as we can.

Our open office space is balanced by interspersed floorplates of uniquely defined spaces. To help companies occupy these spaces we imagine the creation of a facilities management team - versed in new office modes helping any company leasing space in these buildings to configure and re-configure space to suite their needs.

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Shifting Programs.

We mixed a hotel administration school with a hotel for international visitors. Given the limited site area we designated for this building, program was forced to be on multiple floor plates. We saw this as a benefit and opportunity and interlocked each of the floor plates so that the two programs could be separated from one after the other while at the same time accessible via alternate routing so amenities could be equally shared.

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Groundscape

At the base of the Hotel and Hotel Administration School, the regular floor plates end and a new ‘groundscape’ begins with restaurants and shopping arranged onto three floors opening to the promenade at all three levels. Part of this space is open air - cooled by fans and their location with the stack effect internalized in the building above it. The area is planted and landscaped to create a natural feeling.

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Promenade

View of the promenade which passes through our site. Attention was paid to ensuring that natural elements, seating, and areas for informal retailing or kiosks would be balanced.

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Office Type Multiplicity

Because of the varied number of financial office types - from large institutional to small boutique to international outpost - we have developed a number of different floor plate types which could accommodate any needed configuration. This drawing shows the shared office space where conference rooms and other shared amenities are articulated as closed volumes access through open air-ed floor plates.

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Multiple Connections

In addition to conventional circulation cores, we offered alternate circulation at the edge of the building to make travel between floors easier and more open.

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Transverse Section, Atrium

The lower levels teem with activity and programming and form a multileveled shopping area punctuated by a marketplace with eating stalls and the sale of fresh foods. Access is provided from the large office space at a number of different buildings.

Students of the hotel administration school help with the management and dining experience.

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Longitudinal Section, Atrium

In this view, you can see the enormous span of the split, green atrium allowing a clear space below for shopping and the marketplace.

The split allows for circulation upwards into the tower through the highly landscaped atrium from two different directions. Light comes in through the sides and from above through a highly reflective shaft into which all the surrounding program looks.

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View of the Promenade

The surfaces of the buildings alongside the new promenade are highly developed with decks and patios alongside - nearly all of the office spaces above open out onto these decks allowing virtually everyone in the development to have an opportunity to participate with the life going on below.

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View of Green Atrium

Filled with shade plants, places to sit, and areas where one could even take a picnic, an alternative path through the vertical green atrium provides a chance to get some fresh air through and between floors.

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THE INTERACTIVE CITY: MAKING THE GLOBAL LOCAL

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THE INTERACTIVE CITY: MAKING THE GLOBAL LOCAL

Kim Coleman, Professor

Relationships between commerce, work, and leisure time have transformed in the past few years and, consequently, these functions should no longer be bracketed into discrete districts. The dominance of the internet, smartphones and media has collapsed the separation of work and life. What if the two worlds joined together into a neighborhood that offered both? The synthesis of work and leisure is contemplated in the design proposals represented here.

Our second year graduate studio considered two design threads. One postulated how architecture may enrich the culture and identity of a place.

The second intention considered how architecture and building program might gain energy, symbiosis and activation through current technology, pondering how the architecture of a new technological city might respond to changing needs with elasticity and flexibility. That Bhartiya City has been conceived and is emerging fully formed in a previously vacant site establishes substantial parameters for placemaking at an urban scale. How does one design a part of a city as a microcosm of a total city?

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both in Bangalore, where there is a great contrast between old and new, and elsewhere in India. Our site in Bangalore, known as the Garden City, was a excellent place to initiate our visit. Visits to recently completed office projects there were helpful in gaining insights into work environments of Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses gave us a better understanding of the aspirations of the Aggerwals to better integrate work and life in Bhartiya City. After Bangalore, experiencing the historic cultures of Jaipur and Agra were particularly fascinating, as were our visits to Varanasi, where the sacred waters of the Ganges River are the destination of many Hindu pilgrims, and Sarnath, the park where Buddha first taught. Delhi, our last stop, is plagued in the winter by poor air quality, as people burn whatever they can just to stay warm.

It is no wonder that three of the following projects envision the importance of landscape, both literal and figurative, in the development of the city center for Bhartiya City. The design strategy for “Urban Canopy” is inspired by the banyan tree, and the project team’s working strategy divides the organization into the base, as it meets the urban surface, the trunks, which contain the repetitive spaces, and the canopy, which contains the public spaces of the project – a surface in the air with light and views around Bhartiya City. “Bio-Incision” re-imagines the central business district as a USC/Bhartiya City Studios

lush green landscape. “Weaving City” establishes a framework of layered courtyards that integrate indoor and outdoor spaces. The fourth project, City in a City, extends the urban surface of collective gathering spaces from the ground plane onto the building as an Armature of Activity, inspired by the step wells seen in India.

In all, the four design teams developing the following projects were mindful that hybridization of program offers the possibility of both sustainable urbanism with dynamic urban life. Urbanization as a generator of place (infilling underutilized urban zones), dynamic regrowth, and reclaiming blighted sites offers a more sustain-able strategy for growth than continued leap frog sprawl, which has lead to overextended systems of connection, inefficient use of resources, and collapsing centers of cultural diversity, energy and engagement.

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BANYAN TREE

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BANYAN TREE Danut Bidasca, Mengyu Wu, Yingtao Tao The design scheme is inspired by the banyan tree, the national tree of India which is venerated in India for its ability to survive for centuries. The dichotomy of the banyan tree is that, while it kills most trees near it, it is also an important resource, providing habitat and food to animals. Even though the banyan tree is categorized as a parasitic plant, it is peculiarly special. After it slowly consumes all nourishment from another tree, the Banyan tree’s branches touch down to the ground and create an interior space that is surrounded by the banyan tree’s limbs and roots as its structure.

The design inspiration for this project was to create an expansive space covered by the ‘Banyan Tree’. This strategy provides for exterior open circulation, providing opportunities for connecting interior and exterior spaces while reducing the requirements for conditioned space.

The project is organized into three parts: the base, the tower, and the canopy, which conceptually relate to the roots, trunks, and canopy of the banyan tree.

The base reconciles and takes advantage of variations in the existing topography, forming an upward spiral that allows the urban surface of the main plaza to continue up to the roof of the base to enjoy the open space and many amenities.

The towers are raised on columns above the roof of the base, providing shade for the outdoor spaces. The towers have a mix of office and commercial programs, along with a hotel. The upper part is the canopy, an expansive structure containing entertainment and leisure program, including a gallery, museum, and gym.

The area of the canopy also offers the shade for the outdoor plaza and ensures the integrity of the site.

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THE URBAN CANOPY: AN INSIDE-OUT TYPOLOGY THE INTERACTIVE CITY: MAKING THE GLOBAL LOCAL

The ambition and objective of the new financial district is to bring an innovative solution that adds to the overall design and quality of both living and working at Bhartiya City. Drawing inspiration from the Indian nature and culture, we want to design an environment that takes advantage of the local climate conditions and re-establishes a link between natural and urban landscape. Following the guiding principles of bio-climatic buildings, the final design will have a unique inside-out layout that allows for fluid, flexible and dynamic spatial organization, while providing its users with generous green outdoor areas.

The eco-focused building concept is meant to counteract the typical concrete and glass shell of traditional office buildings and found its inspiration in the tropical climate and vegetation of Bangalore and in the local lifestyle so as to set the tone for a new quality of life at work.

The office becomes a meeting place, a forum with a collegial atmosphere that can lead to more collaborative ways of working.

SITE PLAN

Floor Plans and Program Diagram The layout is thus shaped within, shifting the volumes and distributing program. This complex provides new vantage points over the Bangalore suburbs, inviting the urban environment and citizens to move into the new banyan tree and give it life.

Concept Our idea comes from the banyan tree. The banyan tree is categorized as a parasitic plant; after it slowly consumes all nourishment from another tree, the branches of the banyan trees touch down to the ground and create an interior space that is surrounded by the tree’s limbs and roots as its structure. Inspired by this naturally-occurring environment, our project is developed in parts, with an emphasis on the optimization of the canopy.

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External views Top: The idea of opening out to the city and its residents is expressed through a large sculpted split, which gives the building permeability and breaks with institutional codes. The public space literally runs through the complex; the city continues through the building rather than skirting it.

Middle: A rooftop sculpture garden provides a park in the sky, and a respite from the activities of Bhartiya City.

Bottom: The project design takes advantage of wind patterns to ventilate the site, and the shading qualities of the canopy provide protection from the heat of the sun.

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Exploded Isometric Showing Organization of Canopy, Towers, and Base We conceived the canopy as a multi-functioning, transparent, light-filled, expansive space that is introduced as a new prototype for buildings in India. The canopy forms a free space providing views of the future complex and operating between the City and the natural, vigorous growth and extension of tree, trunk, crown, root, and branches. Offices and residential space are distributed in the towers. In the base, the commercial area consists of three floors above ground and three below. A mixture of leasable commercial spaces fully demonstrate the diversified culture of shopping, catering, recreation and leisure in the shopping mall, leading to an active flow of people on each floor.

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Top: Gallery and Exhibition Space Bottom: Offsets allow for more outdoor space. The spatial vision of the“living canvas�is also expressed through the desire to connect all the indoor areas with the exterior. This strategy ensures a constant dialogue between the building and its environment through both a visual and a tactile relationship

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GROUND FLOOR PLAN

Floor Plans and Program Diagram The layout is thus shaped within, shifting the volumes and distributing program. This complex provides new vantage points over the Bangalore suburbs, inviting the urban environment and citizens to move into the new banyan tree and give it life.

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FIRST FLOOR PLAN

TOWER TYPICAL FLOOR PLAN

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Section & Parking Plan Top: The building has three levels of underground parking, and offers parking space for about 1.000 cars. Bottom: Section

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UNDERGROUND PARKING PLAN - P1

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Views within the Canopy Floors Top: Library looking in to the canopy void Middle: Roof lobby and observation deck Bottom: Curtain Wall

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BIO-INCISION

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BIO - INCISION

Kevin Klassman, Miguel Morgan, Brooke Sadler Bio-Incision inserts the natural world as an integral design amenity for a high density, financial center in Bangalore India. In the project natural and man-made worlds seamlessly intertwine, offering a dynamic working, living, and shopping experience. Bio-Incision is positioned at the center of Bharitya City, operating as the financial center and main gathering place. The 2,000,000 square foot program incorporates ground level retail, open floor plate offices, luxury hotel, and live-work studios. The exterior of the complex retains a geometric facade while the inner building surfaces erode the mass and introduce trees and other vegetation to provide a visual identity of a verdant oasis while at the same time improving air quality. These eroded forms allow for unique outdoor gathering places on every level. The program elements are grouped around a large outdoor celebration plaza. A lush ‘sky bridge’ further links the building elements thirty meters above the ground. At Bio-Incision, users experience the merging of architecture and nature.

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BIO

INCISION

Insipiration This project is inspired by the fact that the natural environment is decreasing as the built environment is rapidly increasing.

By bringing nature inside the architecture, inhabitants will feel like they are in a natural setting, which will increase their productivity and will be happier and healthier.

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Bhartiya City

Karnataka

Karnataka

Bangalore

India

India

Karnataka

Bhartiya City

Karnataka

Bangalore

Karnataka

Bangalore

Bangalore

Bhartiya City

Karnataka

Bangalore

India

India

Bangalore

Karnataka

Karnataka

Bangalore

Bhartiya City

Bhartiya City

Nikoo Homes

Biophilia In Bharitya City, these buildings will contribute to the overall master plan in a unique way. With the biophilic design, parks spaces will be incorporated throughout the hotel, offices and live/work spaces. This will help with office productivity to create a better more efficient working environment.

N

N

City Center

Pedestrian

N

Vehicular

Urban Resort Residences School / Hospital Information Technology Center Nikoo Homes II

Circulation

N

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Bangalore

Circulation

Pedestrian

N

Vehicular

Circulation

Pedestrian Vehicular

Site Program

Site Program

N

Nikoo Homes

Nikoo Homes

City Center

City Center

Urban Resort Residences

N

Urban Resort Residences

School / Hospital

School / Hospital

Information Technology Center

Information Technology Center

Nikoo Homes II

Nikoo Homes II

Site Program

Green Space

Gree

Green Space

Green Spa

N

N

Green Space

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1

2

2

3

3

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4

5

5

6

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7

7

8

8

3

5

3

5

7

4

6

7

4

6

Massing studies The mass of our building is catered to existing surrounding context. Analyzing natural systems of solar and wind patterns, we formed a system that would thrive in all settings. Using a process that extrude, slice, push, cut, connect, and pierce; we enhance our final form to immerse into its surroundings.

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Greenspace 2422084 SF

Hotel 162422 SF

Live/Work 217793 SF

Offices 1383331 SF

Retail 274213 SF

Vertical Cores

Program Taking the final form, we used a symbolic representation of biophilic excavation that eroded the mass from the inside out to place nature back into the core of our design. This provides a high contrast from interior to exterior experience. The exterior shell is enclosed with a perforated screen, while the interior space is abundantly populated with vegetation. We then place the mixeduse program to properly fit its function as a city center building.

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Total 20377759 SF

Subterranean Parking

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Using the principles of Biophilia, Bio-Incision seeks to unite the built and natural worlds. In modern society, more than ever, a wide divide exists between man and nature where greenery has been replaced by concrete. A built environment that revolves around nature will provide a more inviting, unique and ultimately richer place.

Using similar scaled successful precedents throughout the world, Bio-Incision aims replicate unique architectural programs. Steven Holl, OMA, and Morphosis amongst other become major influences based on their success on projects of similar scale. Sharing public space, inviting diverse user engagement through program, and aesthetic beauty become the main architectural goals.

Anatomy serves as our unique architectural inspiration for Bio-Incision. Anatomical drawings styles and human anatomy influence overall form and aesthetics along with project representation. Void spaces reflect anatomical dissections, a symbolic look inside of nature.

Section | Axonometric To better understand the relationship between the exterior and interior space, we cut a section through the structure. This provides a grand scale of the development and the activities and programs that will be taking place in and around the building.

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BUILT ENVIRONMENT

ROBERTO BURLE MARX

RESULTING LANDSCAPE

PEDESTRIAN EXPERIENCE

Site Plans | Parks View First level site plan shows the how the landscape moves into the building and how it is integrated inside. Right site plan shows the green roofs and mobility between buildings, as well as the render.

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ERIENCE CIRCULATION AROUND TREES

WORK

CLEAN AIR

INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY

HEALTH

SHADED AREAS

CLIMATE ZONE: SEMI-ARID LOW RAINFALL AND EXTREMES OF CLIMATE

FRUIT TREES DECORATIVE SHRUBS

RELIEVES PAIN

FLOWERS

WELLBEING

GRASSES SEMI-OPEN MEETING AREAS

VEGETABLE GARDENS

VEGETABLE GARDENS HYDROPONIC / TERRACE GARDENS

amaranthus (dantu, keerai) coriander (dhaniya, kothambari) fenugreek (menthe) Indian spinach (basale) lettuce gourds like pumpkin ash gourd (boodu kumbala) ridge gourd (hirekai) bitter gourd (hagalakai) bottle gourd (sorekai) chow chow (seeme badane) cucumber little gourd (thondekai) sponge gourd (thuppada hirekai) snake gourd (padavalakai) watermelon (kallangadi hannu) muskmelon (karabooja) radish

carrot beetroot onion garlic ginger cabbage cauliflower capsicum chillies tomato brinjal mango orange pomegranate musambi custard apples banana guava

Site Plans | Indoor Perspective Site plans continue to show the circulation of the buildings with the integration of the landscape.

Render depicts how the landscape is integrated inside the office spaces.

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+ 300’-0”, 91.4m

+ 200’-0”, 71.0m

+ 100’-0”, 30.5m

+ 40’-0”, 12.2m

+ 0’-0”, 0m

- 40’-0”, 12.2m

+ 300’-0”, 91.4m

+ 200’-0”, 71.0m

+ 100’-0”, 30.5m

+ 40’-0”, 12.2m

+ 0’-0”, 0m

- 40’-0”, 12.2m

Sections | Ring Road View The section through the project shows the various levels of office spaces with hotel integration.

The render is showing the view from the Ring Road and shows materiality.

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WEAVING CITY

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WEAVING CITY

Lucen Song, Yangxiaoxiao Li, William Anderson Weaving City, a proposal for a 2 million square foot commercial development in Bangalore, India, attempts to weave together nature and architecture. Short term and flexible program is contained in connected low-rise mat buildings organized around a series of courtyards and gardens, while more permanent program elements are contained in a twelve story habitable wall building that defines the edge of the site. Voids in the wall building become outdoor garden spaces, allowing office users to have access to nature and creating frames for the sky.

A series of courtyards connect to parking levels below grade and provide shaded outdoor spaces around which the mat becomes articulated. By incorporating significant landscaping and using a simple formal language, Weaving City provides light and open spaces the boundaries of which can be defined by the users. The project design drew inspiration from the precedent of the microchip, a circuit board into which parts might plug; the ambition is to provide a light framework for the life of the place rather than curating hard relationships between what should go where. The project also drew on the experiential qualities of Eastern gardens; the gardens/courtyards are seen as experiences of discovery parallel those of creative technology office spaces, embracing chaos, nature and ambiguous spatial boundaries to foster creative growth.

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WEAVING CITY:

A BUSINESS DISTRICT FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

SITE ANALYSIS

INSPIRATIONS

Courtyard

Sunken Courtyard

Weaving Space Division

Labyrinth Landscape

Road

Labyrinth

Silicon Valley

Inspiration Carpet STUDENTS: LUCEN SONG, YANGXIAOXIA LI, WILLIAM ANDERSON

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Indian garden designs, courtyards of traditioanl temples and weaving patterns were looked to a inspiration for the masterplan design. Work by the artist Dan Graham also influenced the project.

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WEAVING WEAVING CITY: CITY:

A BUSINESS A BUSINESS DISTRICT DISTRICT FOR THE FOR21ST THE 21ST CENTURY CENTURY

WEAVING WEAVING CITY: CITY:

A BUSINESS A BUSINESS DISTRICT DISTRICT FOR THE FOR21ST THE 21ST CENTURY CENTURY

ATTEMPTIONS ATTEMPTIONS

Process and Program

Early model iterations informed the concept of a wall that floats above a mat. The program diagram shows the shift from more short term program on the ground plane to more long term program in the sky.

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LAYERS LAYERS

STUDENTS: LUCEN SONG, YANGXIAOXIA LI, WILLIAM ANDERSON STUDENTS: LUCEN SONG, YANGXIAOXIA LI, WILLIAM ANDERSON

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SYNTAX

PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION

LANDSCAPE

VEHICULAR CIRCULATION

Living Working Space

Flexible Office

Shopping Center

Office

Hotel

PROGRAM

DIagrams These diagrams show the development of a formal language through the articulation of voids in a volume and the site analysis.

The site is understood as a landscape with a bar floating above.

STUDENTS: LUCEN SONG, YANGXIAOXIA LI, WILLIAM ANDERSON

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ROOF PLAN

Site Plan and Section

The site plan and section shows the incorporation of voids and courtyard spaces. People ascend up from the parking below through sunken courtyards.

SECTION

STUDENTS: LUCEN SONG, YANGXIAOXIA LI, WILLIAM ANDERSON

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GROUND FLOOR PLAN

Plans

SITE PLAN

The level 1 plan and context plan show the use of landscaping as the threads to weave the project into its surroundings.

STUDENTS: LUCEN SONG, YANGXIAOXIA LI, WILLIAM ANDERSON

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FIRST FLOOR PLAN

Plans

Office buildings are stacked to create opportunities for terraces on the building below.

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

STUDENTS: LUCEN SONG, YANGXIAOXIA LI, WILLIAM ANDERSON

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BIRD VIEW

PERSPECTIVE 1

STUDENTS: LUCEN SONG, YANGXIAOXIA LI, WILLIAM ANDERSON

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Renderings

A bird’s eye view of the project shows the mat complex and the wall above. A view on the ground shows the cantilever of an office space above a courtyard.

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PERSPECTIVE 2

PERSPECTIVE 4

PERSPECTIVE 3

Renderings

Renderings depict the wall’s relation to the sky and natural lighting.

STUDENTS: LUCEN SONG, YANGXIAOXIA LI, WILLIAM ANDERSON

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A CITY IN A CITY

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A CITY IN A CITY Tsz Man Vincent Ip, Xiayi Summer Shen, Xiaoqi Chi Tang Bhartiya City aims to be the future of what a smart city can be. In exploring what that might mean, we were first inspired by the computer game Block’hood, and used the game’s methodology to summarize the city as a diagram, showing the flow of resources, energy, waste and, most important, the life-style of the people who live and work there. Through an understanding of these elements, we aimed to create a complex that would not only satisfy the functional- ity of a financial center but also become a one-stop live/work/play environment in Bhartiya City.

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Perspective Views The activity spine contains public amenity spaces, including an art gallery, children’s playground, gymnasium, basketball court, and co-worker areas. These functions are designed to enrich the daily experience of people working and living in Bhartiya city.

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Views of the City In A City Top: The hotel drop-off is located at the B1 level, allowing pedestrians unobstructed access from the ground level of the Central Business District to the landscaped park and buildings beyond.

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High End Restaurant Swimming Pool Restaurant/ Park/Night Club

Performance/ Gallery Gallery Fitness Club

Kindergarden/ Interest Group Community Office

Exploded Axonometric Program is interspersed throughout the building.

Library Retail F&B

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Miixed-Use Programming : A 24/7 Active Environment Top left: The typical office worker’s engagement with the activities spine.

Middle left: A typical resident’s use of shared spaces.

Bottom left: Visitors’ engagement with shared amenities.

Top right: Diagram of typical hours for shared functions Middle right: Isometric diagram showing location of activities and connections between them.

Bottom right: Illustration of the range of activities supported as shared functions supporting the new office space.

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Conceptual isometric drawings Left column illustrates the activities spine as it weaves though the project.

Middle column shows programmatic functions interweaving with the spine including functions such as hotel, live-work units, new office space, traditional office space, and retail.

Right column diagrams circulation and structure. Top right are the vertical circulation cores. The two below that illustrate the surface circulation on top surface of the spine for both pedestrians and cyclists. The bottom right diagrams show the trusses and horizontal floor plates, which are supported off of the circulation cores.

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Roof Plan and Selected Floor Plan Top: Overall roof plan, showing from the top left the outdoor swimming pool that may also act as an extension of the restaurant and can be adapted for a poolside parties. The roof has solar panels, wind turbines and solar water heaters generating partial energy for the building with the design aim that the city would be able to generate at least 25 % of its electricity. On the south corner of the roof is an outdoor bar and roof garden area; there is also a glass roof over an atrium to the office space below. On the northeast side is a water feature and cafĂŠ that connects to the next level of spine.

Bottom: A selected floor plan shows the hotel with its community space on the northeast side, and connection to the Live -Work spaces on the southeast corner.

The office spaces allow individual tenants to occupy floors of various sizes. On the east side, the plan cuts through the spine, showing spaces for a kindergarten and a gathering space for interest groups. The northeast corner shows a typical office floor level.

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First Floor and Ground Floor Plans Top: First-floor plan, showing a typical retail layout that connects with the banquet , lounge, business center, and food and beverages functions of the hotel. On the west (I’m not seeing these – are they on the south?) side are live work spaces that are separated from the retail space. The southeast corner provides a larger anchor store location, occupying the corner and drop-off space. On the east is office lobby and office space . (Is the lobby on this floor or the floor below??)

Bottom: The ground floor plan shows a centrally located anchor store, benefiting from a prime location at the base of the activity spine, adjacent to an outdoor courtyard that can be used for outdoor concerts, farmers market , film showings or other events. A supermarket is located at the ground floor (WHERE?).

The hotel ground floor lobby and reception, with food, beverage, and extra retail, is at the southwest corner. On the west side is the lobby and management office for the live- work spaces and an additional retail space (I can’t tell where this is???). On the south corner is the ground floor of the largest anchor store, which occupies three levels, connected with escalators, and has a drop off on the side. A service yard wrapping the exterior of the south corner is dropped a half level from the ground to hide the facility from direct views. On the North East side is the lobby for the offices, and outside are on grade parking supporting retail spaces.

The landscape features indicated on the plans are steps inspired by the Indian step wells , and the linear water feature connects visually to the other parts of the City, the Pencil Park and Information Technology Hub. While the drop-off on the northwest side is on grade, the drop-off for the hotel is below grade, with an opening to bring daylight to the drop-off space. In addition to leaving the ground level free for pedestrian circulation, the separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic encourages a sustainable living style for the Bhartiya City while fully utilizing the existing level difference on the site.

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Sectional Axonometric The proposal integrates flexible construction modules that can be moved according to their tenant needs. To achieve that, the cores are pre-constructed, with a structural grid in 9m spacing, and the spine is to be constructed in the initial phase.

Through a method of light weight prefabricated construction, construction time will be significantly reduced, providing the client a flexible response to the anticipated demand for housing, hotel and many types of office space for the fast pace development in Bangalore.

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