INTRODUCTION

•Mind escape wellness center provides a time away from our normal activities to spend time getting
reacquainted with oneself, to silence mind and develop emotional strength in our selves.

•A Meditation park can help people to connect to god in spiritual and religious ways. It also give
common ground to people to collaborate and perform activities like yoga and pranayama to
achieve physical health.

•For many people a meditation park can help awakening to the presence of God in Their lives. All
the great spiritual traditions are about discovering ourselves in ways that help us to grow in
happiness and love.
AIM
•The aim of the project is to design a MIND ESCAPE WELLNESS CENTER that gives a retreat to the visitors,
a resting place out of the humdrum of busy street life, a center for the community providing a palette
of different atmosphere of meditation spaces for varied religious and spiritual beliefs to serve the huge
cultural diversity.

OBJECTIVE
• To utilize the natural elements air, water, earth, sound, and space in meditation
•To exploit the resources present on site to its maximum potential, the site being rich in flora and
fauna.
• To design spaces and zones which connect man and nature, and creating an aura of peace
and tranquility to help in meditating.
NEED AND VALIDITY OF THE PROJECT
Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation have proposed a biodiversity park and the iconic
meditation Centre will be a place for city dwellers to escape the humdrum of urban life and sit with
their families amidst nature.

Site Location –
The site is located in the city of Ahemdabad, Gujrat on the riverfront between Ambedkar Bridge and
Vasna barrage. The Site Barren land with a combination of dense and scattered vegetation
Sabarmati riverfront and Vasna Reservoir Cleared out Barren land with loamy soil type Approach
Road from the city and pedestrian walkway along Sabarmati Riverfront Nearby Buildings Site
Surroundings- Sabarmati River Vasana Barrage
DEVELOPMENT PLAN

The site is surrounded

by dense residential
area
SITE STUDY
•The Riverfront project presents a great opportunity to create a public edge to the river on
the eastern and western sides of Ahmedabad. By channeling the river to a constant width
of 263m, riverbed land has been reclaimed to create 11.25 kms of public riverfront on both
the banks. The total land reclamation is 204.91 hectares.

SITE CALCULATION

SITE AREA – 24.71 ACRES

100,000 SQ. M
FSI - 0.3

FSI - BUILT UP AREA

AREA OF THE PLOT

BUILT UP AREA = 100,000 X 0.3

= 30,000
= 7.41 ACRE
SITE SURROUNDING AMENITIES

Amenities proposed site

To provide new and improved amenities for the city and to include sections with particular needs,
provision of markets and vending areas to include street vendors , laundry facilities for the washing
community, trade and fair facilities for the business community have been made in the project.
The project replaces a largely private riverfront with an expansive public realm with a network of
parks, waterside promenades, markets, cultural institutions, recreational facilities and commercial
developments for the city’s five million residents.
SITE SURROUNDING RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES

proposed site
Recreational activities
•The project aims to create a thriving, people-centric network of parks, waterside promenades,
markets, cultural and recreational facilities in the heart of Ahmedabad, making the city’s riverfront a
public asset.
•The key feature of this project is a two-level, continuous promenade at the water’s edge along each
bank of the river. Together, these promenades provide Ahmedabad with a 11.5-km long pedestrian
walkway in the heart of the city.
•In addition, many new parks, gardens and sports facilities are being built on the reclaimed land. The
parks shall enhance livability in the area that they are located in and strengthen the city’s green
network
 BYE LAWS
Gujarat Comprehensive Development Control Regulations
- 2017
BYE LAWS ( road side margin )
BYE LAWS ( environmental management )

25 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

25.1 Minimum Distance from Water body

1. Minimum clearances of 15mts to be provided

between the embankment of a river and any
building or part thereof or any other clearance as
may be prescribed under any other general or
specific orders of Government and appropriate
Authority whichever is more.

25.2.2 Rain Water Harvesting Minimum Distance from Water body

d. For Buildings with building‐unit area

above 4000 sq.mt:
One Percolating Well shall be provided as
per Regulation 27.2.2(c) for every 4000sq.mt
land area. As an alternative to providing
multiple percolating wells, a Water
Retention Pond with minimum capacity of
300,000 litres with a percolating well for
every five percolating wells or part thereof
shall be permitted as an alternative.
BYE LAWS

Community/ Society common amenities shall be allowed to be constructed in the Common Plot subject to the
following requirements:
a. Maximum Ground Coverage of 15 % of the respective Common Plot.
b. Maximum Height of construction shall be 7.5 mts from the level of the Building Unit except in the case of
overhead water tank,where more height may be permitted.
c. Community/ Society common facility shall be permitted on a Common Plot. The area of this Community/Society
common facility shall be considered towards computation of FSI of the Building Unit.
d. Such a building shall be required to maintain the minimum margin requirements between buildings with respect
to the adjacent buildings and Road Side Margin
BYE LAWS ( parking )

Design of Parking for Cars

Parking layout for cars in all
buildings shall conform to the
following specifications:
1. Minimum dimension of a space
provided for parking a car shall be
2.5mts x 5.5mts.2. Each car parking
space should be connected to
the street providing access to the
building‐unit by means of an
access/exit lane.
BYE LAWS

21.1.9 Mezzanine
Mezzanine floor shall have a minimum
clear height of 2.1mts which may be
allowed in a room at a minimum clear
height of 2.1mts from the floor level if
the area does not exceed 30% of the
area of the enclosed space.

21.1.6 Plinth
1. The plinth of the habitable area of
any building shall be at a minimum
height of 0.45mts from the
established level of the building‐unit.
2. The building may be permitted on
hollow plinth at the ground level with
the following

21.4.7 Ventilation of Special

Buildings

1. Every auditorium, halls and other

special buildings shall be naturally lit
and ventilated by doors, ventilators
and windows abutting on an interior
or exterior open air space which shall
not be less than 1/5th of the total
floor area.
BYE LAWS
21.9 Sanitation
21.9.2 For All Buildings other than Residential
BYE LAWS
THE TORRENT RESEARCH CENTRE IN AHMEDABAD,
BY ABHIKRAM.
The Torrent Research Centre (Gujarat, India) is a
complex of research laboratories with supporting
facilities and infrastructures, located on the outskirts
of Ahmedabad. This building uses Passive Downdraft
Evaporative Cooling for a large scale office building
and demonstrates that it is possible to achieve
human comfort in dry hot regions without using
regular HVAC systems and without compromising
the cost of construction

The design of the building facilitates generating an air draft, assuming still air
conditions. The air heats up in the peripheral shafts, rises and escapes through the
openings at the top. The air in this volume gets replaced from the usable spaces,
which in turn receives its own replacement through the concourse area, on top of
which the air inlets are located. The entering air is sprinkled with a fine spray of
water mist at the inlet, during hot temperatures outside. This facilitates downdrafts.
At each floor level, sets of hopper windows designed to catch the descending flow,
can be used to divert some of this cooled air into the adjacent space. Having
passed through the spaces, the air then exits via high level glass louvers openings
which connect directly to the perimeter exhaust shafts towers that suck the air and
create a circulation across the building insuring the displacement of fresh air along
the day.
The consequences of this major experiment have
been under observation since the first occupation
of the buildings, and will continue to be carried out
for the coming years.
• In the summers, the inside temperatures have
generally not exceeded 31°C to 32°C, when the
outside temperatures have risen up to 44°C, a 12°-
13°C drop
• The temperature fluctuations inside the building
have rarely exceeded beyond 3°C to 4°C over any
24 hour period, when the temperature fluctuations
outside were as much as 14°C to 17°C.

Torrent Research Centre, a pharmaceutical research laboratory in Ahmedabad (Fig. 3). Designed by
Abhikram Architects and completed in 1998, this project demonstrated that this approach to cooling
could be applied to a large, complex laboratory building [8]. The total built up area of the complex is
approximately 20,000 Sq. Mts. 72% of the central building has achieved human comfort conditions
using Passive Downdraft Evaporative Cooling (PDEC), it has been able to establish extremely low
levels of energy consumption, as well as considerably decreased Carbon Dioxide emissions per
square meter of area. Around 200 Metric tons of Airconditioning load is saved. The performance has
been consistent over the past eleven years of its use. The entire cost of the building will be recovered
from the electrical savings alone, in 13 years of operation [9]. Fig. 3: Passive Downdraft Evaporative
Cooling in Torrent Research Centre, Ahmedabad, India Measurements of air temperature and
relative humidity in different parts of the building in April 1998 revealed that very significant cooling
and high air change rates were achieved.
The mission of the center is to create a place where the complexities and struggles of daily life
are secondary to a meditative experience, and untouched nature is seen as an idealized state
where human activity recedes in importance. Architecture is understood as a threshold to this
vision of unspoiled natural beauty, while the preservation of the natural environment itself is
equally important, assuming an ethical significance both in terms of design and the day-to-day
practices at the Center. Virtually every aspect of the project was designed by us with these two
ideas in mind: architecture as a threshold to nature and the preservation and appreciation of
the surrounding natural landscapes as an expression of the Won Center’s values.