Connect January 2024

Lodha Park is a high-rise housing project spread across 17 acres of land and includes premium residential development across sizes and luxury categories, retail stores, Club House, and exceptional amenities. The project includes 7 acres of green landscapes set on top of a 70 feet tall 'hill' which is Inspired by the urban parks around the world. The goal is in bringing nature back into the lives of city dwellers.

All big urban parks like Central Park in New York, Hyde Park in London or Millennium Park in Chicago have exceptionally desirable neighbourhoods growing along their vicinity. The difference with Lodha Park is that the developer here does not have a pre-existing park but is building a new neighbourhood around it. Creating both, the living, and the green space, at the same time. The masterplan and the tower concepts are developed by WOHA architects of Singapore. WOHA focusses on designing large complex urban developments as integrated mini-cities, which regenerate the greater urban context by providing environments that are both sustainable and sociable.

The shape of the site enabled the masterplan to have a unique arrangement of the towers at different angles. This ensured that the apartments of different towers do not directly face each other and thus provide more privacy. Another unique thing is that it is an 'active' urban park that provides fruits and vegetables, offers a tea house, sports field, playground, outdoor games areas, a temple and swimming pools. It is a space that people can spend their leisure time in, pursuing different activities.

The project was conceived as a neighbourhood, rather than a single development. The aesthetics were shaped by a belief that buildings should have similar 'personality' traits as people. The six towers were designed as two pairs in which each pair has a unique design personality, and each pair of two towers complement each other. All the structures embody similar principles in terms of environmental and community features, but they are expressed in different ways. The design of the towers takes different ideas from traditional Indian architecture and expresses them in a contemporary way. Towers 1 and 2 take the idea of Chhatris, which are elevated, dome-shaped pavilions used as an element in Indian architecture. Towers 3 and 4 use contemporary versions of Jaalis, which are latticed screens, usually with an ornamental pattern and faceted forms. Towers 5 and 6 play with scale and repetition. It is done in traditional Indian architecture and incorporates the bright colours of Indian saris into the facade.

The parking component is a large part of the program. Apart from the projects parking demand of 5000 cars, the podium also accommodates a municipal public car park of 4300 cars and 230 buses. This was a huge challenge from a massing perspective. Hence the idea to transform the large functional carpark amenity into a green feature for the project. The Podium has the personality of the hill/ headlands and has stepping planters, lantern like elements and projecting pavilions inspired from the hill top fortresses found in India. The project also aims at contributing to the city's public realm and providing a street life by integrating a commercial establishment along the parking podium's street edge, thus enabling the project to engage with the city rather than isolate itself as a gated development.

With the towers, all apartments have sun shading and can be cross ventilated naturally, thereby lowering the need for artificial cooling. The lift lobbies are naturally lit and ventilated, as is the car park. The whole podium is planted on its periphery, which reduces the urban heat island effect, since vegetation absorbs the sunrays and uses that energy to synthesise nutrients from carbon dioxide and water.

Sun shading is built into the design and helps reduce the heat gain in combination with a double-glazed window system. An overwhelming majority of Mumbai population prefers natural ventilation and fresh air in their homes to air-conditioning. The passive ventilators that are built into the façade of each window act as a filter for fresh air, keeping out the dust, and enabling everyone to have cross ventilation in their apartments, without the use of air-conditioning or electric fans.

Built to a height to a height of 260 meters these are among the tallest residential buildings in the country. The shape of the expanded towers makes them highly resistant to wind and earthquakes. Steel Cross bracing elements of lengths rarely seen on a residential tower provide the necessary resistance to the wind loads. These are celebrated as form giving visual elements and are seen from common lobbies.

'The Jewel' like clubhouse is almost 50000 sft in size and is the focal point of the landscape. The Landscape designed by the very reputed firm PLA from Bangkok manages in creation of a statement of comfort and calm and long with the clubhouse provides for organic gardens, classy restaurant, banquet rooms, guest rooms, cafes, swimming pool, reflexology zone, high-tech gym, world class spa, and a lot more.