Details of a new master plan from Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) for Bhutan’s future Gelephu Special Administration Region have been made public this week in the South Asian country.

‘Mindfulness City’ is a multifaceted economic hub designed by the firm’s Landscape and Urban Design Team to coincide with sustainability principles and the pioneering Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) concept that has been championed by King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and the Bhutanese government since 2008. 

The 1,000-square-kilometer (386-square-mile) plan calls for the construction of a new international airport, hydroelectric dam, railway infrastructure, and university campus near the southern border with India. Ribbons of neighborhood-scale developments will run like tendrils influenced by the confluence of 35 different rivers and streams that pulse through the site, with densities increasing along the gradient from its northern rural highlands to more low-lying southern areas. According to the team, the plan will also enhance biodiversity while leaving the migratory routes of elephants and other wildlife in the region undisturbed.

Bjarke Ingels describes: “The Gelephu Masterplan gives form to His Majesty’s vision to create a city that becomes a cradle for growth and innovation while remaining founded on Bhutanese nature and culture. We imagine the Mindfulness City as a place that could be nowhere else. Where nature is enhanced, agriculture is integrated, and tradition is living and breathing, not only preserved but also evolved. Shaped by waterways, Gelephu becomes a land of bridges, connecting nature and people, past and future, local and global.”

Ingels adds: “Like the traditional Dzongs, these inhabitable bridges turn into cultural landmarks, doubling as transportation infrastructure combined with civic facilities. Among these, the Sankosh Temple-Dam embeds the city’s fundamental values into a cascading landscape of steps and landings, that, like a 21st-century Tigers Nest, will be a manmade monument to the divine possibility of a sustainable human presence on earth. Turning engineering into art and turning the forces of nature into power.”

Eleven total neighborhood developments will be included, to be organized symmetrically around central public spaces and resembling the pattern of a Mandala flower. Each are separated by waterways and serviced via three mobility connections that double as transportation infrastructure and contain the city's civic and cultural facilities. A hydroelectric dam is also intended at the western edge of the site with engineering help from Arup and Cistri. Other innovations include the installation of permeable street pavers that will serve in the collection of stormwater in order to build a more resilient city. 

BIG says this will culminate in a “hybrid child of Bhutan’s rich past heritage and its prosperous future legacy.” A construction timeline for the project was not made available by the firm.