NAMASTE TOWER - MUMBAI INDIA

NAMASTE TOWER - MUMBAI, INDIA

Say Namaste to the Namaste tower! Designed by the Atkins design studio, work IS currently underway on this 300m-62 storeyed mixed use tower that will encompass a hotel, office and retail space. The location is Ambika mills which is a couple hundred meters south of the Shangri-La hotel. The developer of the project is unknown.
The renders and text were submitted by Atkins to the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona (3-5 Nov 2010). Link to project page

Namaste: Hotel and Office Tower
Category: Future Projects - CommercialLocation: Mumbai, India
Architects: WS Atkins, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Atkins, United Arab Emirates

Following the long tradition of great Indian Architecture it was our aim that the Namaste Tower will stand as a landmark structure, representative of the burgeoning economic and cultural significance of India. We aimed to design a building that would become representative of the city: the picture postcard of Mumbai.

Key Statistics:
• 120,000 m2 of Gross Construction Area
• 380 key luxury hotel
• Exclusive restaurants, bars, banqueting and spa facilities
• 9,000 m2 of A grade office space
• 6,000 m2 of world class retail space
• 300 m overall building height

“Namaste"

The traditional Indian greeting of ‘Namaste’, where the hands are clasped together in greeting, is the inspiration for the design of this tower. In Sanskrit “Namaste` means “I bow to you`. It has a spiritual significance of negating one’s ego in the presence of another.

The Architecture of the Namaste Hotel builds on this ancient Indian expression. The two wings of the hotel are clasped together like hands greeting the city of Mumbai. In this way the architectural design of the hotel provides the ultimate symbol of hospitality and welcome, as seen in the as seen in the cultural context of India.

Visual Relationships to and from the Site
With a proposed height of 300 m the tower will be seen from a distance of more than 40 km. Therefore the visual appearance of the project as a major landmark is of great importance to the city of Mumbai.

Views from the tower will extend to the South over the Mahalkshi Race course towards the Mumbai Peninsula and to the South West over the Indian Ocean. The views to the north East are towards a number of adjacent towers that are currently being constructed. The orientation and massing of the tower have been designed in order to make the very best of these visual relationships.

The Building Skin

The tower has been designed to cater for large scale Indian weddings. The occasion of a Mehndi ceremony (where the hands and feet of the bride and groom are decorated with henna) is often one of the most important pre-wedding rituals in India.

The design seeks to build on the theme of the clasped hands by referencing the intricate Mehndi patterns through the treatment of the building skin. The tower is will be clad in fritted glazing that combines to form an architectural scale graphic on the exterior of the building. This will create a sense of transparency and depth to the building while at the same time helping to maintain the thermal qualities required to meet the building’s envelope design criteria.

It is proposed that the large scale canopies over the drop-off points area support an array of solar thermal collectors. Given the available surface area and annual sunlight conditions these have the potential to provide 12% of the energy required to heat the hot water for the hotel.

General Arrangement
The tower is made up of two separate wings (or hands) which together form the architectural expression of “Namaste”. The space between the wings forms the corridor spaces. At either end of the corridor space a pair of open atria will offer hotel guests dramatic framed views out over the city.

Internal Atrium Gardens

These atria also serve to bring natural light deep into the plan. At the plant floor levels these atria are broken with internal gardens that serve to bring greenery into the corridor and atrium spaces. It was a central design aim to ensure that the circulation areas of the hotel, (including corridors) are just as impressive as the rooms themselves.

The Podium
The geometry of the podium is designed to integrate fully with the design of the tower. Thus it is a highly symmetrical form that responds to the wing like canopies above the drop off. Containing mostly retail, the facade of the podium is activated with water features and fountains that cascade down to street level.

The Summit

At the summit of the building a generous quadruple height atrium space encloses a Sky Restaurant and Bar which will provide a unique vantage point for patrons to gain panoramic views out over the city.

Source: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1297345

Images are all copyrights of Architects WS Atkins, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

WATER PURIFICATION SKYSCRAPER IN JAKARTA

WATER PURIFICATION SKYSCRAPER IN JAKARTA

MARCH - 8 - 2010

Second Place
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Rezza Rahdian, Erwin Setiawan, Ayu Diah

Shanti, Leonardus Chrisnantyo
Indonesia

The city of Jakarta, Indonesia, was originally designed in the confluence of thirteen rivers which were used for transportation and agriculture. The largest of its rivers is The Ciliwung River, which has been extremely polluted during the last couple of decades, characterizes by hundreds of slums inhabited by thousands of people in marginal conditions.

The Ciliwung Recovery Program (CRP) is a project that aims to collect the garbage of the riverbank and purify its water through an ingenious system of mega-filters that operate in three different phases. The first one separates the different types of garbage and utilizes the organic one to fertilize its soil. The second phase purifies the water by removing dangerous chemicals and adding important minerals to it. The clean water is then fed to the river and to the nearby agricultural fields through a system of capillary tubes. Finally in the third phase all the recyclable waste is processed.

One of the most important aspects of this proposal is the elimination of the slums along the river. The majority of the people will live and work at the CRP which could be understood as new city within Jakarta. The CRP project will be a 100 percent sustainable building that will produce energy through wind, solar, and hydroelectric systems.

Passage & Images from: http://www.evolo.us/competition/water-purification-skyscraper-in-jakarta/

Huaxi City Centre

Experimental Urban Vision
Huaxi City Centre
Guiyang, South Western China

Eleven young architects collaborate to design high-density urban nature in China.

Atelier Manferdini (USA), BIG (Denmark), Dieguez Fridman (Argentina), Emergent/Tom Wiscombe (USA), Hou Liang Architecture (China), JDS (Denmark/Belgium), MAD (China), Mass Studies (Korea), Rojkind Arquitectos (Mexico), Serie (UK/India), Sou Fujimoto Architects (Japan). In 2008, MAD organized and invited 11 young international architects to carry out an urban experiment to design the Huaxi city center of Guiyang, in South Western China.The Masterplan was developed by Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning and Design Institute, Studio 6, together with MAD.

In the past 15 years, around 10 billion square meters of built space has been created in the urban areas of China. In 20 years time, another 200 to 400 new cities will be built. Until now, the results of this overwhelming urbanization have been defined by high-density, high-speed and low-quality duplication making the urban space meaningless, crowded and soulless.Is there an alternative future for our cities that lies in the current social condition, where new technologies leavethe machine age behind, and where the city increasingly invades the natural space?

Passage from: http://www.arcspace.com/architects/11/11.html

Images from: http://www.arcspace.com/architects/11/11.html

Images Courtesy by MAD

Lilypad - A Floating Ecopolis Architecture

The climate is changing and not in the good way as the global warming will affect large areas on Earth. One of the repercussions is that the ocean level will increase very much because the ice caps of Antarctic and Greenland, and the glaciers in the mainland will melt. Also, you should know that under warm temperatures the water expands therefore the oceans will rise a lot.

Scientists made some research about how the global warming interacts with the increase of ocean levels and they got to the conclusion that with every 1°C the ocean level will rise with 1 meter and according to their estimations, Netherlands, Bangladesh and the atoll Majuro in Oceania (Marshall and Kiribati islands, and the Maldives islands) will be the most affected. The former with 6% of ground loss, the second with 17.5% and the latter with almost an unbelievable rate of 80%. Also, many other countries like Vietnam and Egypt will be devastated by floods and the crops will be ruined by the salt water.

According to a climatological study of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), if we won’t take any measures there will be 250 million of climatic refugees and 9% of the GDP will be threatened. Although most of the governments of developing countries aren’t taking any measures, there are some interesting projects that could be a solution for the rising of the ocean levels.

One of these is the Lilypad which is a prototype of auto-sufficient amphibious city and it was designed by architect Vincent Callebaut. The Lilypad project is actually a floating ecopolis that will provide housing for a large crowd of climate refugees therefore will be the solution in case of worldwide ecological crisis.

Lilypad consists of a new biotechnological prototype and was designed for nomadism as it will travel on the water line of the oceans, all the way from the equator to the poles thanks to two marine streams: warm ascending of the Gulf Stream and the cold descending of the Labrador.

The Lilypad is an amphibian (half aquatic and half terrestrial) city which will house about 50,000 inhabitants and will enable life in the heart of the subaquatic depths. This ecopolis will be “covered by a stratum of planted housing in suspended gardens and crossed by a network of streets and alleyways with organic outline” that will “create a harmonious coexistence of the couple Human / Nature”.

Inspired by the lilypad of Amazonia Victoria Regia, this floating ecopolis will be made of polyester fibres and covered by a layer of titanium dioxide (TiO2). The Lilypad City will made use of all renewable energies - solar, thermal and photovoltaic energies, wind energy, hydraulic, tidal power station, osmotic energies, phytopurification, biomass will produce much more energy than it consumes and also, the floating structure will “reach” zero carbon emissions as all the carbon-dioxide and the waste will be recycled.

Lilypad is a visionary structure and it’s one of the major challenges of the 21st century. This self-sustainable floating ecopolis will prove to be very important as the Earth is warming and the ocean level is rising so much. Hopefully, Lilypad will become a living dream because there will be many ecological refugees that will need it.

Passage : www.madarchitect.org.super-structures/lilypad-a-floating-ecopolis-for-climate-refugees/

Images : www.madarchitect.org.super-structures/lilypad-a-floating-ecopolis-for-climate-refugees/