Nanocity- the idea of a sustainable city ‘with world class infrastructure and to create an ecosystem for innovation leading to economy, ecology and social cohesion’ is taking place near another architecture paradise- Chandigarh, which was commissioned by first prime minister of independent India to reflect new nation’s modern and progressive outlook. Nehru famously proclaimed Chandigarh to be ‘unfettered by the traditions of the past, a symbol of the nation’s faith in the future.’

In 1966 French architect Le Corbusier and his team produced a plan for Chandigarh that conformed to the modernist city planning principles of CIAM, in terms of division of urban functions, an anthropomorphic plan form, and a hierarchy of road and pedestrian networks. Chandigarh, for a very long time, was perceived to be an experimental city!

Today after forty some years, Sabeer Bhatia [of Hotmail fame] has embarked upon another multi-billion dollar Nanocity idea in collaboration with Government of Haryana [India] and the faculty and students of UC Berkeley, California [USA]. Nanocity will replicate if not surpass the standards of the Silicon Valley of US.

Spread over 11,138 acres, Nanocity will have about 50% of the area earmarked for parks and green spaces. It will have 4 districts- information technology IT, university, airport and biotech for administrative control.

On the power front, Nanocity would opt for solar energy, wind, geothermal and biomass. ‘We may get energy from Himachal Pradesh. American power company AES Corporation is looking at it,’ Bhatia said. For water, the city would use techniques such as rain water harvesting, waste water management, use of solar geysers and energy efficient lamps. There will be a bus transit system to inter-connect the entire city.

Bhatia is confident that lots of jobs will be generated. ‘For every high-tech employment position introduced, three low wage or informal sector jobs would be created’, he said.

Update: $300 million have been invested for land acquisition and an additional $1.2-1.5 billion investment would be needed for development of infrastructure like roads and sewage system. Nanocity will be ready for occupation in 2010.

This week while China was in the limelight with its ‘blue box beating with a green heart’- the Water Cube ‘National Aquatics Centre in Beijing’, Korea’s one-hundred-and-five-story Ryugyong Hotel got a severe blow in the architecture world. It was declared the ‘worst building ever’. Esquire says ‘Picture doesn’t lie.

‘the one-hundred-and-five-story Ryugyong Hotel is hideous, dominating the Pyongyang skyline like some twisted North Korean version of Cinderella’s castle. Not that you would be able to tell from the official government photos of the North Korean capital — the hotel is such an eyesore, the Communist regime routinely covers it up, airbrushing it to make it look like it’s open — or Photoshopping or cropping it out of pictures completely’

Q-Who are the architects of this building?

A-Baikdoosan Architects and Engineers. The building was started in 1987. Construction stopped in 1992 since North Korea ran out of money.

Esquire continues, ‘ Even by Communist standards, the 3,000-room hotel is hideously ugly, a series of three gray 328-foot long concrete wings shaped into a steep pyramid. With 75 degree sides that rise to an apex of 1,083 feet, the Hotel of Doom (also known as the Phantom Hotel and the Phantom Pyramid) isn’t the just the worst designed building in the world — it’s the worst-built building, too. In 1987, Baikdoosan Architects and Engineers put its first shovel into the ground and more than twenty years later, after North Korea poured more than two percent of its gross domestic product to building this monster, the hotel remains unoccupied, unopened, and unfinished.’

This 22nd highest skyscraper in the world is a failure on an enormous scale. Sad you cannot visit the building in real life, but you sure can visit its ‘ experimental collaborative online architecture site’ as it is called by its virtual real estate managers at http://ryugyong.org/!

The video shown below was part of the Fiction Pyongyang exhibition of June 2006.