Palava City
Lodha Group, Dombivali
Palava City is a new city development located near Dombivali, an north eastern suburb of Mumbai. This development called "Palava" means budding flower in Sanskrit is spread over 4500 acres, Palava offers a family-friendly enclave where vast open and green spaces, world-class education and sports facilities, walk-to-work opportunities, cultural avenues and modern homes. It aims to offer a complete living with opportunities to live, work, learn and play. Its Strategically located at the junction of Thane, Navi Mumbai and Kalyan.
In 2010, Lodha group commissioned Sasaki Associates to develop a Masterplan along with Buro Happold who supported them on infrastructure and transport solutions. This was the start point on the master planning process and it set the tone for the further development on the project.
To kick start the master planning process ,the client conducted a design charrette which included people from varied areas of expertise. The charrette helped the team to set a project vision. The charrette was followed by a twelve-month design process which has subsequently been implemented at site.
Kapadia Associates has been involved with the Masterplan as an architect right from the inception of the project since 2010.
- To develop a highly livable city over the next 20 years with a mix of residential, office, retail, public utility (cultural, social, recreational, educational etc.).
- Create a cherished environment for the citizens to live in, work, learn and grow.
- Create world class public environment and services, including open spaces, roads & other physical infrastructural elements, technology backbone and social infrastructure.
- Establish standards and best practices for making this happen.
- Ensure a rich mix of diversity in the development reflecting the thoughts and variety of its inhabitants and India’s rich culture.
- Ensure a high standard of execution, after delivery governance and civic upkeep.
- Ensure Palava ranks amongst the Top 50 livable places in the world (Mercer Quality of Life rankings) by 2020
Key Design Principles
1. Grid iron plan and a "Built to Edge" Masterplan
The Masterplan has streets running at right angles to each other giving rise to basic block sizes. The building edge would touch the road edge with some breaks giving rise to a tight and efficient Masterplan.
2. Walkability
All convenience retail and amenities are planned at a 10 min walking radius from their homes, encouraging residents to walk / cycle rather than be dependent on a car/bus to save fossil fuels.
The entire Masterplan has been planned with wide footpaths and dedicated cycle tracks giving better mobility options to users. NMT corridors have been planned to give residents access to major greens & social infrastructure.
3. Respecting the Existing site conditions
Substantial effort has been spend documenting the large trees, gauchar land, quarries and the soil conditions. All the existing site conditions including the gauchar land and large pockets of existing green weave beautifully into the Masterplan.
4. Large Green spaces
The Sasaki plan set the tone by introducing large open spaces which could be used for recreation, sports. In the design development phase, a systematic hierarchy of green spaces was introduced starting from a block green (meant for toddlers, kids, elderly of a block), a neighborhood green (dedicated to a cluster of buildings), swale green (bio swale meant for surface water runoffs) up to a city level green like the waterfront park / gateway park meant for all residents.
5. Optimum Public and Social Infrastructure
Every Zone/sector is planned to be self-sufficient with its own community green, community center, School, convenience retail and public infrastructure (water/electricity). While the city level infrastructure includes the fire station, police station, religious facilities, transport hub etc.
6. Attempt to introduce biodiversity, public realm and a mixed-use nature in a largely residential Masterplan.
The Masterplan is largely residential with a breakup of 80% of the saleable area being dedicated to residential use (Affordable and social housing), 10% to commercial office space and 10% dedicated to all amenities such as schools, community center etc. It was decided to introduce retail on the ground floor of all the blocks along the primary roads, and intra zonal secondary roads to introduce a mixed use into the block. This was also done to activate the street network.
7. Parking
It was decided that all residents would be given a dedicated parking lot in a MLCP structure which would be conveniently located at a 5 -10min walking distance (350-700 m).Thus the design and location of the MLCP structure became extremely important. The ground floor of every MLCP would have convenience retail to introduce a mixed use. Parking on the streets is mainly reserved for Retail and for visitors off the streets.
Client
Lodha Group
Size
535 Acres overall Masterplan, Sector 3 – 63 Acres
Status
Sector 3 completed
Architecture
Riyaz Vasowala, Sanket Jayakar, Ashwinikumar more, Ninad Shah, Ebrahim Sitabkhan, Siddharth Ray, Digisha Patel, Karim Panjwani, Asif Mansuri, Supriya Narawade, Harshal Ajani, Namita Tijoriwala, Abujar Plasterwala, Namita Tanawade, Parul Jain, Karishma Patil, Noopur Malandkar, Asim Desai, Nilesh Bankar, Manali shah, Rajiv, Ilyaas Lokhandwala, Avani Gada, Vasant Vishwakarma, Somesh Dhore, Sujit, Pankaj, Kailashnath
Structure
Struct Bombay consultants, Satish Jain Consulting Engineers, Epicons Consultants
Electrical & Services
WSP, Micro Engineering, TCE (infra)
