UNStudio has unveiled its design for Bangalore’s Karle Town Center Masterplan, a new innovation and tech campus for India. Situated in an area earmarked as the Silicon Valley of India, UNStudio’s scheme will also contain sensorial technologies designed by its tech company UNSense, collaborating with Karle Infra.
Central to the UNStudio scheme is an Urban Branding Manual; a creative solution to urban stagnation, attracting talent, families, and investment into the heart of the city. The manual explains the design intentions and requirements for the scheme, conceived as a tool to facilitate the workings of clients, engineers, architects, and urban planners. The manual is defined by three pillars: Garden, Health, and Culture.
Traditional masterplans focus on general layout and urban planning. Our Urban Branding Manual on the other hand, concentrates on experience and how to translate this 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. The Urban Branding Manual helps the client to realise this ambitious undertaking.
-Ben van Berkel, UNStudio
The masterplan has been designed to turn each building into “its own thriving urban microcosm.” Fundamentally for business and commerce, the program also provides an environment for working, living, and entertainment to ensure activity throughout the day and evenings for a variety of users. Cultural anchors to the masterplan include a grand central theater, event square plazas, and elevated rail stages.
The architecture of the scheme emerges from Bangalore’s dense green canopy as a series of contemporary buildings defining the city’s skyline. The dynamic white volumes painted in UNStudio and Monopol Color’s patented “Coolest White” paint defines the scheme’s contemporary brand, while landscaping features will include green pockets and roofscapes.
The scheme also responds to the decline in green space across the city, seeking to create Bangalore’s Garden City of the 21st Century. Collaborating with BALJON Landscape Architects, UNStudio have designed a sustainable, resilient landscape plan that is linked to the idea of a garden as a place of leisure and relaxation. Special attention is given to the promotion of lakefront promenades, providing avenue vegetation, and integrating vegetative sky gardens.
UNSense, the arch tech company founded by UNStudio, is collaborating with Karle Infra to curate the use of sensorial technologies throughout the masterplan in an effort to make the built environment more responsive and healthy, tailoring the environmental controls to the users physical, mental and social wellbeing through user dataset collection.
Client: KARLE INFRA PVT LTD
Location: Bangalore, India
Building surface: 10 - 13 million sft.= 930.000 - 1.200.000sqm
Building site: 62 acres
Programme: Mixed-use
Contribution UNStudio: Masterplan and Urban Branding
Status: under construction
UNStudio: Ben van Berkel, Gerard Loozekoot with Harlen Miller, Maurizio Papa, Filippo Lodi, and Atira Ariffin, Bianca Dobru, Dana Behrman, Emma Whitehead, Jacques van Wijk, Jung Jae Suh, Maria Zafeiriadou, Pietro Scarpa, Sibilla Bonfanti, Yuntao Xu
Landscape: BALJON Landscape Architects, Amsterdam
Infrastructure Master Planning: Aurecon, Melbourne
Masterplan consultant: Ross Bonthorne, Sydney
