Like its neighbor to the northeast, India is urbanizing at break-neck speed. Much of the resulting development takes the shape of monotonous towers and slabs designed to house the maximum number people as quickly as possible. The innovative Dutch firm MVRDV’s project Amanora Apartment City punches through, twists, and slices off pieces of a monolithic superstructure, to create a new park-side landmark within a largely undifferentiated urban field.

The first of three buildings will contain 1,068 naturally-ventilated apartments ranging from studios to villa-sized units, to capture a variety of family sizes and income levels, as well as retail and community facilities. Many units will have garden balconies overlooking a park and city beyond. While the massive, mountain-like building is built of concrete, it will be richly detailed with a variety of materials, including ornamented sunshades, wood cladding on the balconies, and stone facing on passageways through the building. Taken together, the three-building complex will eventually include over 3,000 units, and their multi-peaked, zigzagging forms will create a new urban identity for the rapidly expanding city.