High-tech innovation hub for Brazil
Carlo Ratti Associatti, in collaboration with Ernst & Young, have masterplanned a new district for Brasilia on behalf of TerraCap, Brazil’s largest real estate company.
The project, named BIOTIC, was begun in 2018 and unveiled in August this year. It reinterprets Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer’s original Biotic plan for a, “high-tech innovation district immersed in nature.”
This one million square-metre Technology Park of Brasilia is located on the hinge point between the UNESCO World Heritage listed Plano Piloto, and the 42,000 hectare Brasilia National Park.
Biotic is a one million square metre high tech innovation district in Brazil.
Brasilia was founded as the new capital of Brazil in April 1960, with an urban plan by Costa and Niemeyer. Today, it is a celebrated example of modernist urbanism, and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
“In the BIOTIC project,” says the firm, “the four urban scales defined by Costa in 'Plano Piloto’- the residential, the monumental, the gregarious and the bucoloic- are re-mixed in a human way.”
As an extension of Brasilia’s UNESCO Heritage Masterplan, BIOTIC features offices, plazas, residences and parks, and, “proposes the principle of domesticating nature- by creating a new hybrid environment aimed towards both social and environmental sustainability.”
The Technology Park of Brasilia is located at the hinge point between the UNESCO World Heritage listed Plano Piloto, and the 42,000 hectare Brasilia National Park.
The region’s year-round mild climate offers the possibility of an outdoor office environment, with buildings hovering above the ground and allowing wind and sun to radiate in through walls that open like curtains. Digital technology manages sunlight, wind and temperature.
This gives residents a chance to work in close contact with nature, as it is scattered around plazas, shared vegetable gardens, pedestrian areas and laboratories. “This project merges the interior and exterior into one space,” says Carlo Ratti Associati project manager, James Schrader.
The road layout caters for self driving and shared vehicles only.
Internal streets and roads are only accessible to self-driving and shared vehicles, and climate bioremediation promotes outdoor walking and gathering, so that, “people can seamlessly move between public and private, open and secluded areas.”
The design subdivides Brasilia’s iconic Superquadra modules into pedestrian blocks with street fronts, strengthening pedestrian spaces and creating internal neighbourhoods protected from traffic and pollution. The plan creates streets and plazas for social activities, and a green corridor connects Cerrado to the BIOTIC site.
Work on the project began in 2018.
BIOTIC will also feature an ecological park and retail facilities, and solve some of the issues caused by the fragmentation of activities in Brasilia.
BIOTIC is, “a large-scale real estate project that seeks to attract technology-based companies,” says Carlo Ratti Associati, “with the objective of creating an ecosystem of innovation and business immersed in a vibrant district, in the concept of smart cities, integrated with nature, with offices, universities, shops, residences and public spaces that harmonise with the richness of the surrounding landscape.”
The district is being pitched at technology based companies.