PROJECT AREA
350 acres approx (part of 2500 acres of Sports City)

LANDSCAPE SCOPE
65 acres of plaza areas, parking, entrance, waiting spaces, spill out areas

PRESENT STATUS
Under Construction

COMPLETION
End of 2011

CLIENT
JPSI Sports Private Limited

Project Background:
While 68 different circuits hosted various races in history of F1, the current tracks are only 19. The latest and second fastest on the calendar (after Monza), Indian Formula 1 circuit is part of the 2500 acre Sports City, planned to include a 100000 seat cricket stadium, 18-hole golf course, 25000 seat hockey stadiums and a sports academy, expected to be ready for 2011 october racing season.

While Formula 1 race tracks can be broadly categorized as those that are custom built for the event and those that adapt to the existing city infrastructure such as the Monaco F1, The India F 1 project, though custom built for the sport, is an integral part of a sports city that houses many sporting events and envisages a large residential community. Thus in many ways the India project is a combination of the two typologies mentioned above.

Design Philosophy:
While the landscape design addresses the areas of three plazas (including smaller Go-karting plaza) and a VIP entrance court along with the Team buildings within Race track area and similar plaza areas and entrance(s) of Cricket stadium, the sheer size of these large open spaces offers an opportunity to look at them as having the potential to behave differently at different times within the sports city, creating a temporal layer to the project's landscape components.Thus, these spaces would behave, in relation to the city's needs, differently during the major part of the year when the venues are not used for sports events.

The landscape design seeks to embody the spirit of formula 1, while integrating the total compound, tying together the far flung components thematically. Three different approaches addressing diverse abstract concepts were explored, viz., 'PACE', 'PATTERN' and 'PARADISE' expressing the excitement and speed that F 1 represents, myriad forms generated from the Indian paisley and from the tail of the Peacock, calm and serenity of the Mughal gardens interpreted in contemporary terms respectively. All the three options were developed keeping the aerial view in mind.

The simplicity of the architectural character is threaded throughout the landscape using such elements as paving, walls, water bodies, planters, steps, etc. while the richness of the event is to be framed within the symbolic quality of the design vocabulary which is both functional and efficient.