An Urban Oasis Turned into a Concrete Monster

Abstract

This paper revolves around the core theme of urban spines alone residential neighborhood, located in mega city Karachi of Pakistan. The set of sites are located in the heart of the city Karachi on M. A. Jinnah Road which is a densely populated area. The solo green space which is the site is surrounded by concrete monster like buildings. This is a four acre land full of thirty three huge, well sculptured trees located near the junction of the busiest areas like Saddar, Garden, Eidh Gah and Jubilee. This site was acting as lungs for the surrounding residents. The population within one kilometer of the site is almost 6,000 people and the residing neighbor belongs to diverse ethnicity. This whole population is apartment dwellers, and these apartments are not very well designed, they are dark, devoid of sunlight and fresh air. In absence of proper sanitation system, and no open space at all for children to play, on top of all the balconies open up to the busy main road of M.A Jinnah. The trees present on the site were not ordinary once they were extremely rear, and most of them were half a century old, beautiful and precious. They can never be grown their ever again due to exhausting pollution and over population. In 2009 this site has been completely bulldozed so that it could be replaced by a humongous concrete block. The area is too congested and the residents were in desperate need a breather there. But yet another pair of lungs was brutally destroyed by a developer who chopped off all the trees. Can one continue killing all the trees in Karachi and hope that we will still be left with room to breathe? If we continued this massacre at this rate, we are going to end up living in a dustbowl with concrete high-rise all around and not even a single plant in sight. Architecture of residential unit lack experimentation and research for improvement, the new technology is being avoided to use, since the constructor feels a threat of failure, our society avoids using new systems and techniques, it our job as an architect to educate client and coordinate with engineers, and go beyond designing good space, and encourage new techniques of construction.