Our search for a place to site this dream of ours ended with an almost-island of 100 acres. The place is flanked by a canal on three sides, very near to Bangalore Mysore highway, but enough in the interior to retain the peace and quiet of the paddy fields and the Ranganathittu bird sanctuary nearby. Located in the Cauvery basin, Birdsong is a fertile land, surrounded by paddy fields and a fairly large village nearby. The railway track runs along one edge and the canal borders the rest. A number of local and migratory birds are sited in the canal and the fields.

The vision is to create a community of the size of a small town or village, made up of individuals and groups of various sizes and social structures, which allows and encourages its members for sustainable living. The EcoVillage would recreate some of the culture of the traditional towns and villages where a lot of us come from, while trying to retain the advantages a city offers.

The design of Birdsong will reflect the spontaneous planning of our villages and the stress will be on creating an ambience which is human in scale, while retaining the character of the land. Place making vs. space making will be the underlying theme in the planning; creating places which celebrate the oneness of the human spirit with nature and not icons which exhibit man’s supposed superiority. The architecture will be a blend of the vernacular with the contemporary, adapting appropriate materials and techniques. We have not utilized the maximum permissible area allowed to build, and reduced the footprint, reducing the material resources required, and less density, is less burden on the land.