Breathing Architecture

Currumbin Ecovillage is an innovative residential community  at 639 Currumbin Creek Road, Currumbin valley, Queensland, Australia. It showcases best practices in residential ecological sustainable development. The Ecovillage project has been developed on degraded farmland on the exurban fringe of city of Gold Coast, a major resort city on Queensland’s South East Queensland coast. The developer, Land Matters Currumbin Valley, has rehabilitated the site and is protecting its environmental integrity and biodiversity by preserving 50 percent of the site as an environmental reserve It is on a 300-acre (1.2 km 2 ) site comprising 80% bushland, plus open spaces and 141 home sites. The Ecovillage is master planned with many homes architecturally designed. It was established by Chris Walton and his wife Kerry Shepherd. Currumbin Ecovillage lacks adequate public transport. Residents are car-reliant. OBJECTIVE & PLANNING PROCESS: A Rigorous approach to the planning & desi

Good Earth Malhar-Footprints   is the first community at Malhar. Spread over 7 acres, it has been kept free of vehicular movement, with homes arranged around a network of streets and landscaped courtyards. This offers many advantages to the residents , while ensuring that the car is within a short walk from the home. The cluster spaces and interconnecting streets are exclusively pedestrian, offering a safe place for residents to walk and children to play. The community of 96 homes evolved out of a process which explored the idea of an urban village. The intention was to evoke the vernacular, the organic, within the rigid requirements and weave concepts of sustainability seamlessly into the design. The spirit of innovation and prevailed across various realms. Planning : • The cluster plan emerged as a basic unit of the layout. A group of 9-16 houses around an open space, with a shared parking lot at one corner. The open space in the cluster was of the proportion of a larg

• Sadhana forest is a reforestation project was founded in 2003 by ‘Aviram’ & ‘Yorit’. • More than 18,200 indigenous Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest trees have so far been planted on the 70 acres of severely eroded infertile land . • This forest type is found only in Southern India and Sri Lanka and provides a rare biological richness due to its very high species abundance. The Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest is now close to total extinction; only 0.01% survives . This is a last moment effort to keep this very rich and beautiful Forest on earth. The main action areas are planting the TDEF, water conservation, soil erosion control, and sustainable living education. Sadhana Now Sadhana in 2004 • In the last four years, or so, Sadhana Forest has created a natural living environment with a solar power generation and water pumping unit, composting toilets, plant based gray water treatment system, natural buildings for living quarters for volunteers and residents from a

  ACTS AND REGULATIONS GOVERNING PRESERVATION OF MONUMENTS & SITES • 1904 – 1947: A majority of monuments and sites declared protected .   Legislation: Continuation of monument-centric colonial legacy, rather than sustainable urban development. AMASRA 2010: shift from focus on monument to built surroundings. Participatory Spatial Planning •“ Immovable heritage (natural and manmade) is in continuous danger of being dented and even being obliterated. It therefore needs to be incorporated for conservation through legalized mapping that is transparent so that planned programmed development through conservation strategies, techniques and tools can take place within and around the legally identified heritage structure, plot, precinct or site. Transparency typically helps in garnering people’s participatory support”. 19th century ‘discovery’ of ‘monuments’ and beginnings of legislation. Edgar F. Ribeiro , Legalized Mapping of Heritage of India: Can it be applied to