Maharashtra Nature Park
Mumbai, the financial capital of India, is often deemed as the city of dreams, hopes, and aspirations. It may be all that and more, but there is one thing that the city is always in dire need of – open spaces. With the imagery of a concrete jungle at large, the city lacks green spaces. Some amount of relief is provided by the green pockets in the form of Sanjay Gandhi National Park at Borivali and Maharashtra Nature Park in Sion. The latter, although lesser known, is an important ecosystem, built on a land that was once a dumping ground. It is unfortunate, that in a city that craves green space, there thrives a 37 acres’ park in the heart of the city, yet unused to its full potential. In the hope of tapping into that potential, and enticing more visitors, Mumbai’s MMRDA and Observer Research Foundation (ORF) organized an international design competition to execute the facelift.
Sameep Padora and Associates (sP+a) in association with Design Cell & Ratan J. Batliboi Consultants with Schlaich Bergman & Partner, and Ladybird Environment Consulting were elected as winners from a total of 30 reputed teams from around the globe.
Temple of Steps
The brief was to design a temple for the residents of villages around Nandyal. In the dry terrain of Nandyal, the main concern was to provide a space which would marry the socio-cultural expectations of a temple with the ecological framework and dynamics of and around the site.
Genesis Laboratory
The Genesis project looks at adapting and reusing over hundred year old structures in Kopergaon, Maharashtra by reprogramming their functions and navigating gestures and interventions that contribute to its purpose.
Holywrit School, Badlapur
A campus by definition is, at a purely facilitative level, an armature of infrastructure and open space. Its real potential however lies in its role as a network of event spaces that create the potential of interaction, where the collision of disparate realms of knowledge inspires creativity.
Zama Villas, Goa
Zama villas situates itself amidst the scale of the Zama Village in Goa. It attempts to deconstruct the density of a typical village and rethinks the single family housing typology by imbibing the street and cultural sense of community from a village.
Vana Villa
The property boasts a truly unique elongated plot of land, characterized by an impressive 1:8 ratio, coupled with a slender wooded area that runs parallel to it. This slender forested strip adds a touch of natural beauty and serenity to the landscape. Furthermore, the terrain itself gently slopes at a 1:10 gradient, reminiscent of historical land divisions commonly found in traditional settings, where the land gradually slopes from the access road towards fields or bodies of water located at the opposite end.
Dining Pavilion, Vidyavihar
The Dining Pavilion is a partially open dining space, is an addition/extension to an existing indoor cafeteria at the K.J. Somaiya Institute on their Sion campus in Northern Mumbai.
House of Multiple Courts
Located at Nachinola, in a settlement amidst a serene littoral landscape adjacent to lush paddy fields, the house is built with laterite respond to the surroundings with various enclouse gestures.
Manuallaya Resort, Himachal Pradesh
Manuallaya resort in Himachal Pradesh, captures the spirit of Manali in all its glory, embodying the history, art, culture, and vibrancy of Himachal with contemporary nuances. The resort pays tribute to local arts and crafts while bringing forth a global perspective to its composition and the experiences created within.
Mohameddi Park Housing Competition
In this competition, the plot under consideration, located in Karachi were separated by a thoroughfare, and the Mosques were to be the anchor points of this community development. After various iterations of grid planning, street development, row house development, etc., we settled upon a mixed cluster development plan.
Climatically, shaded pathways provided maximum benefit to the community as they went through their daily activities, to the mosque and back many times a day and thus became the cornerstone of the mixed cluster development plan. – Sameep Padora and Associates