Design Principals
The main considerations underpinning the approach to the overall design of this housing scheme should be the need to facilitate a good quality of life for the residents and secure the long-term sustainability of the development. As such, the following basic design principles should be contemplated during the architect’s approach to the design:
Environment
The architect should seek to create a high-quality living environment for residents and enhance the social, environmental and visual quality of the area as a whole.
Security
The architect should seek to ensure a high level of safety and security for the residents. The layout should be designed to discourage anti-social behavior, e.g., access ways and public areas should be overlooked by dwellings or be otherwise open to casual surveillance by residents.
Energy Efficiency
The architect should maximize amenity and energy efficiency by climate-sensitive design that takes account of orientation, topography and surrounding features to control wind effects while optimizing the benefits of sunlight, daylight, and solar gain.
Accessibility
The architect should eliminate barriers to accessibility for all inhabitants.
Aesthetic Harmony
The architect should seek to avoid monotony in the design of elevations/façades of buildings. While not identical, they should be harmonious with one another with enough individuality to garner a sense of identity and ownership.
Economy
The architect should seek to ensure that the scheme can be constructed, managed and maintained at reasonable cost and in a way that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable, e.g., by using appropriate indigenous materials, optimizing the use of infrastructure and minimizing the lengths of roads and service runs, without compromising the quality of design of the scheme.
Utility of Spaces
The architect should design public open space so as to maximize their potential benefit to the residents, e.g., by eliminating poorly-defined or poorly integrated areas of public open space that are frequently unusable as well as being costly to maintain and a source of nuisance to residents.
The site of this project is located on 86.5 acres in Malir on the east-side of Karachi off of ‘Malir Cantt. – Malir River Road’. The area is considered to be a natural expansion zone for Karachi’s urban sprawl. There are major roadway projects in the pipeline to connect DHA City in the far northeast to the main city. Because they pass very close to Mohammedi Park, the future of the area in general looks very promising The site is less than a fifteen-minute drive from the airport, and around forty minutes from the city center. Its proximity to the airport, as well as a nearby ammunitions depot, lends to the safety and security of the site; Malir already being one of the safest areas of Karachi statistically.
