Projects | Studio | Awards
UG - BUD - Studio - 7 | Spring 2021 | Wild Wild Vista
  • Student Gandhi Soha Niraj
  • Code UG180586
  • Faculty Planning
  • Tutor/s Mansi Shah*
  • TA Priyanka Awatramani

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The city of Gandhinagar, widely known as the green city has a significant amount of green cover distributed over a wide range of geographic conditions offering a myriad of local habitats. These various local habitats house a rich variety of flora and fauna, making the region rich in biodiversity. With a calculated population of 4.3 lakh people for the year 2031 (0.8 times more than the current population and perhaps even more 50/60 years down the line), the city is likely to follow an upward trajectory of development with new inflow of people in the upcoming years. Under the premise of this assumption, it is crucial to recognize and value the existing natural habitats and the rich biodiversity that the city houses before it gets engulfed by urbanization in the city. 

The project ‘Wild Wild Vista’ envisages the city’s potential as a biodiversity rich capital and directs it towards a planned and strategic way of conservation, enhancement of existing local habitats and creation of new ones to create a resilient biodiversity rich city. With this objective the project attempts to design the city’s large prime public space - Central Vista in Gandhinagar which is currently a fenced and sterile lawn landscape into a thriving biodiversity corridor. The design provides a continuous network of trails designed with diverse forest landscapes that facilitate inhabitation for a wide variety of insects, birds and small animal species with an abundance of foraging, perching and roosting options. It also integrates small and large social spaces for people housing a variety of programs nestled amidst the wild landscape. The project envisions the vista into a foremost ecological center of biodiversity- a composite and novel landscape integrated with social spaces that can serve as a model for cohabitation between humans and biodiversity. 

The conceptual strategy at city level for Gandhinagar is to weave a continuous and resilient biodiversity network using the already existing and thriving biodiverse patches in the city such as the riparian edge, forest reserves, selected areas of significant green cover in sectors and periphery of the city. This network is created through three main strategies.
The existing vs. proposed catalogue demonstrates the manifestation of these strategies at block level.
The habitat catalogue showcases the exploration of micro-landscapes done while in the process of identifying biodiverse patches of the city for the XL strategy. This exploration unveiled the complexity of relations that these micro-landscapes hold with the biodiversity species that inhabit it. The categorisation is based on how most of the landscapes exist within the current fabric of the city. Each of these micro landscapes are extracted from the categorised types and its content is studied as samples to create a strong database of how certain species inhabit specific environments and how it contributes to the larger functioning of the biodiversity network and ecosystem.
The overall design strategy at L scale is to carefully recreate habitat areas on site through a series of varied landscapes while simultaneously incorporating public spaces and programs amidst it. The vista is envisioned as a space that fosters the idea of prime public places being model landscapes for cohabitation between humans and biodiversity.
Gandhinagar is often dubbed as green city but there is existence of a rigid monoculture when it comes to tree species diversity. While some species of biodiversity may adapt to the available nesting, perching and foraging options, many cannot and hence the project aims to create a conducive environment for such species by designing different forest categories which are developed after careful consideration of their preferred habitat. I. Categories for forest areas – grain, planting palette and the species likely to inhabit each of these landscapes
II. Categories for food forest & wild gardens- grain, planting palette and the species likely to inhabit each of these landscapes
Section through the vista depicting the land undulations and grain of the designed landscape
Light and unobtrusive architectural elements- bird matrix, bat towers and pollinator archways have been embedded in the forest areas and wild gardens as supportive structures till the time the landscape grows and evolves to be able to support inhabitation completely.
Supportive architectural elements such as learning & reading centers, kiosks & exchange zones for wild gardens and interactive elements such as follies and elevated treetop boardwalk add to the public layer of the project.
Bird’s eye view showing one of the public plazas and the adjacent forest & wild gardens areas.