LINKS


Bhumandala

The Earth. The planet of life and intelligence. An exception in the universe we know. The place we live in. Our natural environment.

Bhumandala. Imagine a great building. Imagine it as the Earth. Imagine of embracing Earth just by taking a look at it and to gather its magnificent simplicity. It’s disarming. It expresses the power of the planet giving shelter to us with an indescribable wonder but also shows its fragility.

With Bhumandala we can admire the Earth as if we were in space, as if could take distance from it for a moment, as if we could elevate and somehow get out of ourselves to watch from the outside, a sort of catharsis from which our awareness rises.

Now imagine getting close to it. The Earth itself gives origin to the one you see, its roots, as the ones of a big tree, develop an grow welcoming us between its branches. A return to the origins of each one of us. We are all together, we are protected, and we are sheltered.

The world is big, it’s strong and imposing but it’s there, in front of our eyes, it’s not endless and its boundaries are perceivable. We must always remember it.

Bhumandala is the perfect reproduction of the globe, a sphere with a 120 meters wide diameter, lifted 7.5 meters from soil. It appears free and light. It’s the symbol of a cosmic space with a bend towards new.

The sphere has a perfect shape. Its surface is a totality of points all equidistant from the center. A conarchical structure. It’s pure, absolutely symmetric and rational. It represents a condition of energetic equilibrium.

The inside is a primordial egg. Steel meridians unite in the center releasing the weight at the base of the structure, while big arches in couples confer balance and power. The ribbing of the meridians, with an arch shape, allows an optimum use of the static possibilities of materials with notable overall dimension advantage and inexpensiveness compared to traditional frames. All the structure, in its complexity of meridians and floors, works together in an organic way. There are no hierarchical levels. Each part has a task satisfying a necessity. Each one of them is indispensable to the whole.

A big ellipse brining space and light carves the building as elliptic is the orbit Earth describes by turning around the sun. Its axes are 50 and 100 meters and the grate emptiness allows viewing the whole volume at all floors. The circular balconies facing the empty spaces become horizontal distribution elements.

Four entrances are placed inside two great arches. Going up you can admire the building from the bottom with uncommonly suggestive perspectives, and you enter by reaching a vast hall at 20 meters from ground level.

Now we can admire the structure starting from the bottom and growing as a gothic cathedral following force lines innerving upwards. Several vertical links distribute the flow of visitors to different points.

Each floor of the building is provided of a substantially free plan and can therefore be fitted out with extreme flexibility. At the height of the equator a great volume on a double level becomes a common space, aggregation area and natural light source from inside.

The great sphere is wrapped in a light and transparent skin, permeable to light, carrying the unequivocal traces identifying the surface of our planet and along with that our diversity and our union in a united whole.

Video