Bio-city is a project that attempts to solve the problem of dense housing in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In exchange for the development project, a lake (Beoung Kok) was filled to prepare for new high-rise building.
“Bio” refers to the life including the life of the natural landscape, and the life of the people who lives as part of nature as well. While “City” refers to the habitat of the human being. The memories of the nature, such as the lake and the forest, and the identity of the people, lifestyle, culture, especially with Cambodians where water was once cherished by the civilization and has its whole culture around the water. This has been lost, blurred with the new idea of modernity and contemporary building.
Bio-city firstly respects the elements of nature that once existed in the site and re-imagine it. The feeling of the lake is re-created along its axis, the dug-up soil is refilled as hills, creating a natural landscape. Then the chaotic arrangement from the unplanned development at the north is respected, with its unique pattern, extending inwards the site, and re-envision it in a new urbanized context.
To solve the problem of high-rise building, with the heat, ventilation, privacy, and the insects, especially in the tropical country, layers of protection is added which allows the possibility of opening or closing, engaging with nature, or secluded, while each layer can be maintain individually by the occupant. This allows different possibilities of the facade arrangement in which each panel of the unit can be slide and pivoted according to its intention. It is to mimic the living nature with different spatial possibilities, and the patterns, the chaos that happens in nature, and get the occupant to be engaged as much as possible.