Komorebi : Beyond Gated Living

The Hunnigere Housing Project imagines a community that grows with time, rooted in today’s realities yet open to the futures of an urbanising Nelamangala. Its foundation is everyday residents - families, young professionals, elders & children whose lives form the intimate rhythms of domesticity. Around them, the settlement opens to neighbours & passersby: villagers, farmers & truck drivers whose exchanges santhe, night shelters & open spaces . Housing here is envisioned as an ecosystem of care, transcending divisions of class or category & embracing diverse users within a framework of equality. Care guides every layer: safety & security in walkable streets, belonging in shared commons, resilience in adaptive spaces, joy in playful public edges & solitude in calm retreats. A closed-loop neighbourhood conserving water, minimising energy & living lightly anchors the vision. By maximising the caring capacity of water, it balances density with openness, weaving homes, commons and livelihoods into a caring, sustainable settlement. Like Komorebi sunlight filtering through leaves, finding beauty in imperfection, the project celebrates balance between light & shadow, openness & refuge, permanence & change.

Komorebi is a Japanese word describing sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees. It forms the philosophical foundation of the project, suggesting an architecture that mediates between nature, people, and the built environment by filtering light, density, and social interaction rather than rigidly separating them.
Drawing from the principles of the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), the project envisions an integrated neighbourhood that resists income-based segregation and supports inclusive urban living. The proposal imagines a neighbourhood that grows incrementally over time, shaped by everyday life and grounded in its surrounding adjacencies, including streets, farmlands, water bodies, and future urban expansion.

Challenging conventional FSI-based regulations, the project replaces abstract density controls with the carrying capacity of the land, using water as the primary determinant of growth. The neighbourhood is conceived as a closed-loop system that conserves, recharges, and reuses resources, aligning built form and density with ecological limits. Through this approach, Project proposes a resilient, inclusive, and ecologically responsive model for sustainable urban growth.