KTC aims to define Bangalore locally and inspire India to ‘lead by example' when designing future urban destinations. Currently under construction, the town center enjoys a direct connection to the city's Ring Road arterial and expanding metro lines, and is positioned prominently next to Manyata Tech Park with scenic views of the Nagavara Lake.
Fact File
Client: Karle Infra
Location: Bangalore
Building surface: 10-13 mn sft
Building site: 62 acres
Program: Mixed-Use
Masterplan & Urban Branding: UNStudio
Landscaping: BALJON Landscape Architects, Amsterdam Infrastructure Master Planning: Aurecon, Melbourne
Masterplan Consultant: Ross Bonthorne, Sydney
Status: Under construction
Counteracting urban stagnation
Urban stagnation is a global problem and is evidenced by a continuous decline in central business districts over the last 20 years. The reoccurring question is, how do we attract talent, families and investment back to the heart of these cities? UNStudio's Urban Branding Manual analyses the detailed components of the design, explains the design intentions and requirements, and is conceived as a tool that can help facilitate the design intentions of the client, engineers, architects, and urban planners. The manual serves as a safeguard for the integrity of the design and assures that the urban vision is executed properly over the extended course of its life.
The Manual for KTC is built around three defining pillars: the beauty of Bangalore's lush natural environment; promoting health; and benefit to the social and economic prosperity of the region.
Community oriented design
Typical large-scale masterplans are hindered by slow growth and stagnation due to their lengthy construction and development. UNStudio aims to avoid this by turning each building and plot into its own thriving urban microcosm. Whilst KTC is driven functionally by business and commerce, the program mix provides an inspiring environment for working, living and entertainment throughout the day. A grand central theatre, event square plazas, elevated retail stages and amphitheater style staircases create a multitude of small and large meeting points with cultural significance.
Traditional masterplans focus on general layout and urban planning. Our Urban Branding Manual on the other hand, concentrates on how to translate experience into reality. With a network of specialists - sometimes more than a few hundred people - you need a clear vision and strategy to stay on course over the long duration of the project.
Ben van Berkel Founder / Principal Architect UNStudio & Founder UNSense
By connecting multiple destinations together in a green and shaded environment with limited vehicular traffic, the masterplan encourages pedestrian movement while offering respite from an otherwise bustling urban context. A system of streets transitions smoothly into designated drop-off points, while underground roads reduce congestion, thus ensuring minimal transport time and facilitating noise reduction.
The architecture
KTC emerges from Bangalore's dense green canopy as a series of contemporary buildings that will define the city's skyline. The dynamic white volumes painted in UNStudio and Monopol Color's unique and patented ‘Coolest White' ultra-durable paint provide a contemporary identity to the KTC masterplan.
KTC will demonstrate a new way of bringing forward the qualities of nature and will be an innovative cultural phenomenon.”
Lodewijk Baljon, BALJON Landscape Architects
The landscape and architectural language complement each other and together shape the elements of the urban environment, from the design of the planter edges, to the architectural features found in the landscape, which merge and blend with the green pockets and roof-scapes of the building facades. The interwoven forms, along with the sensitive integration of nature within the architecture, will let visitors know that KTC is Bangalore's ‘Garden City of the 21st Century'.
Bangalore's Garden City of the 21st Century
UNStudio, in collaboration with BALJON Landscape Architects from Amsterdam, envision a sustainable landscape plan. Special attention has been given to the lake front promenade, providing adequate streetscape and avenue vegetation, semi-public vegetative sky gardens throughout the architecture, and promoting an integrated design of all urban elements such as seating, lighting, biking route paving, bollards, etc.
UNStudio's design maximizes passive design techniques, capitalizing on natural daylight and prevailing wind direction. The vegetative integration strategy controls heat gain through thermal buffering, reduces unwanted wind, and filters Bangalore's air from fine particulates. Large underground water retention zones are used for onsite irrigation.
UNSense is collaborating with Karle Infra to curate the use of sensorial technologies throughout the masterplan to make the built environment more responsive and healthy, by tailoring it to the users' physical, mental and social wellbeing through user dataset collection.
