An international luxury hospitality company has contracted B4place to help their expansion of a sustainability and conservation-focused properties division.
The first project involves creating a replicable, ecologically restorative catalyst for various lightly populated places around Asia, the Pacific, and Africa.
We’ve chosen the caravanserai as our architectural inspiration because it’s a hospitality form that goes back millennia. Once common along the trade routes of Africa, Asia, and Europe, our new adaptations charm the locals, shepherds, and passersby into the insta-hamlets’ protected courtyard and lounges.
The goal of the first phase is to support a few conservation and development projects in China. Along with the ecological restoration and economic development efforts will be dark-sky compliance, environmental noise mitigation, and agri-voltaics for energy and the support of soil building micro-climates.
These first projects in China will be built on a new transportation network (largely using select existing country roads) designed for slower and lighter travel with bikes, mopeds, tuk-tuks, and working animals. This network will be called “AsiaVelo” and will interconnect the countryside to regional hubs.
Weaving together even the most remote places, AsiaVelo will support a nascent ebike-based travel economy, which is conservatively estimated to become a $3.6 billion/year industry by 2030. Adventure bike packing is an accessible, profoundly liberating way to travel that they find irresistible.
There’s also a growing population of light-living adventure seekers who love traveling to unique and authentic places, which is a market waiting to be served.
Just as previous generations dream about all-inclusive beach resorts and cruise-ship pampering, these travelers hunger for a deeper connection to the experience of the journey itself and places they visit.
The design will incorporate a combination of historical forms and materials along with aesthetically compatible, off-the-shelf, resource-use reducing, high-technology solutions.
The growing pervasiveness of a global supply chain, ubiquitous drop shipment availability, and universal internet access make places that used to be remote and ill-suited for digital nomads are now accessible.
B4place will work with industry-leading partners to develop a model that’s easy to adapt, visualize, plan, and implement in various locations.
As we enter the middle of the 21st century, a distinctly new generation of lifestyle preferences are becoming dominant. Even the mosts esteemed of luxury brands are now seizing these emerging opportunities with conservation-focused market developments.
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