Student : Amjad Mansoor | Institution: City School of Architecture | Year 2 Part 2 2009|2010

The Project Background

The project is an Intelligent Green High-rise building with mixed development activities.

The client – The client is a Sri Lankan banker. The client intends to raise funds through international private investors.

The client’s objectives – The client expects design solutions which are sustainable and energy efficient.

Sustainability

Most simply the idea of sustainability, ecological or green design, is to ensure that our actions and decisions today do not inhibit the opportunities of the future generations.

The site

The site is located at Bambalapitiya. It was used for the former passport office. The context is recognized as a mixed development zone, comprising commercial, recreational and residential activities with a highly congested dynamic urban character.

The main users of the building would be the commercial crowd and the apartment users.

The railway station and the Station Road would become a major consideration in shaping the master plan. The origin of the master plan would start from between the Majestic City and the Unity Plaza buildings, because those are the main existing crowd drawing points.

The view of the ocean from the Galle Road through the buildings of Station Road enables a visual as well as a public node between the railway station and the proposed building.

The master plan would be providing a different and a dynamic character to the Bambalapitiya Railway station.

Modern, urban man has lost his connection with nature. Due to rapid development, the important ‘Rules of the Nature’ have been forgotten by the urban man.

The first half of the building would be a vertical extension of the urban character of the context (recreational and commercial activities), and as the building goes higher the dynamic activities would transform in to very charm static activities like residential apartments.

Concept : A building that follows nature and acts as a part of nature.

A building which becomes a platform for flora and fauna.

A building which has variety in form as well as in spaces

(nature has variety and it has basic participles. Even though a tree has a very basic structural principle you find drastic differences in the same species of trees. But with most of the high rise buildings, you get the same plan form extruded vertically.)

A building which is sustainable.

A building which has the feel of the ground.

A building which borrows structural principal from nature.