Architectural Concept
The whole front elevation of the building is embedded in a single structure inter-linked with different materials. Starting from the cellar entrance, the structure continues up to 3rd floor terrace and slightly floats outside the building forming the crust of the design, which returns back to the ground floor and links with the entrance stairs. Same structure splits into two divisions with curves at the corners to meet the staircase arch shaped with a slant entrance to match the structure shape. The entire elevation is built by fabricated metal structure with reinforced concrete along with structural glazing. For longevity of the building Aluminium Composite material was purposefully avoided.
A slant high light matching the elevation profile, was given by setting a customised LED Strip Light from ground floor up to third floor, which is housed inside a custom-made DuPont Arctic White Translucent Curved Profile making the LED light water and weather proof and at the same time disperse & diffuse light from inside equally making it look like a solid piece of coloured material. The colours can be controlled by a mobile app with 16.7 million colour variations.
Entrance has been given a parallelogram feel, in which triangular glass is fixed and other part is given a sliding concept. When merged the effect is a pure parallelogram which is juxtaposed with the main elevation.
The exterior of the building has been designed with simple colour concept with light cream and shades of grey along with forest green structural glazing. The colours are chosen in such a way that it highlights the curved floating elevation and yet being simple in itself.
Challenges
Elevation: The whole elevation structure was to be designed using fabricated metal structure with reinforced concrete filling for the purpose of long life and maintenance free which requires only repaint after several years. The same cannot be said about aluminium composite panels; hence it was totally avoided. The corner curve structure was done using a template to meet the exact shape as per drawing on the site. Structure was fabricated using angles as chassis and TMT rods for supports as per specifications, leaving a gap inside the metal angle structure. The metal fabricated structure was then filled with cement concrete using mixed 12mm & 20mm jelly. Then it was wrapped with chicken mesh to avoid any cracks and plastered using glass fibres. The whole elevation itself was locked to every roof and special beams were designed at the top to hold it in place to avoid any lateral movements which are completely invisible.
Landing: The 6’ x 7’ cantilever landing was designed with a floating appearance, where support from only one side. So a special structural design was developed to meet the requirement.
Roofs: The first requirement of the front elevation was that the roof to appear 6” only without any beams visible. To achieve the same, a special structural design was developed accordingly and pillar positions placements were carefully designed to avoid the visibility of the beams.
Elevation Wall: A single lengthy slant brick wall starting from GF up to TF was designed without any beam interference in-between. For every 2.5’ a concrete structure was made to avoid cracks and for strength. Later the wall was wrapped with chicken mesh before plastering.
Types of Concrete:
1. Regular Reinforced Concrete
2. Glass Fibre Reinforced Concrete
Green Concepts
Evaporative Cooling System: A new kind of cooling system instead of Air Conditioners were used to cool the building complex, which is Eco Friendly, Energy Saving, Low Running Cost and Low Maintenance. Unlike conventional air conditioners, fresh air is infused inside the building and hot air inside is flushed to outside through specially designed ventilators which were planned in design stage of the building. Each Evaporative Cooling requires only 1unit / 1hour and covers an area of 2000SFT.
Solar Lighting System: To meet the current trends in solar systems, the electrical design of the building was designed accordingly. Provision was made during design stage itself for roof top solar panels placement and wiring accordingly, no after thoughts. During day light the building runs on solar and also charges the batteries. Power from batteries are used only when external power source is not available and during cloudy weathers. All in all the building is energy efficient and saves a lot of power.
Water Harvesting: As water is very precious, care was taken in design stage to accommodate rain water harvesting. Roof top drain water passes through a sand filter and then collected inside a separate sump and used accordingly. Excess water from sump is flushed to a ground recharging pit.