BuildNext: Creating an Eco-Village Environment

Community Housing Project ‘Sustainable Village’ is a markedly different project from the common villa projects seen in Kerala. This unique housing project is an initiative of Green Collective Projects, spearheaded by a few tech company leaders, where every member is a shareholder. The project provisions more common areas than the government stipulations, has shared facilities and services such as common vegetables farm, clean water harvested lake for drinking water and agriculture, ample areas for entertainment and leisure, walkways, wide roads etc.

Some of the project highlights are: 2.9 acres for common vegetable cultivation, average plot size of 12 cents to build smaller footprint houses than urban homes, a backyard with fruit trees, clean food, clean air, and clean energy. The village culture defined by like-minded individuals will share a common theme to build their own eco-village near Technopark in Trivandrum.

“This is not a brick-and-mortar kind of housing, but homes like those of yester-year villages where there was harmony with nature and where everyone did agriculture and shared the food produce in the neighbourhood. There will be enough fruits and vegetables for everyone at the Sustainable Village,” says Binu Jacob, who kick-started this initiative many years back and believed that this could work well in Kerala. The community, when completed will have 70-75 villas and ample common facilities such as gazebos, an amphitheater, clubhouse etc.

BuildNext, India’s leading tech-enabled custom home builder, was entrusted with the design and project management to provide a terrain/contour friendly placement of roads, amenities and houses, levelling the hill, ensuring topsoil availability for a productive green cover.

Gopi Krishnan, Founder and CEO, BuildNext, the architect behind the project, stated, “Nestled within the contours of the landscape, this eco-friendly village has been designed to harmonize with the natural slopes and topography of the land. Every villa within the community has been positioned to capture breathtaking views. Each architectural element, down to the interior staircases, has been thoughtfully selected to preserve unobstructed visual continuity and understated elegance. The project is designed to blend luxury into the living spaces without being a burden on the environment.”

Green Collective Projects has a singular focus on creating an eco-village environment that provides the basic needs of food and housing in a more humane way rather than the typical commercial real estate; hence, members get to enjoy the product at more affordable costs, and everything that a farming community of olden days would provide.