The image of a modern office is thinly partitioned open workstations with limited or no privacy, designed with a one-size-fits-all layout. Even with overlapping DNA, no two individuals are truly alike in a family, similarly, individuals in a work family function in their own separate ways. Nonetheless, in both cases, a designer caters to the sum and the parts, as we did for the sales office of an upcoming residential infrastructure project in Ahmedabad - Few Walls and a Roof.
Each space, a bit disjoined from the other, is designed to be adaptable and to suit an individual’s requirements. The scattered cubes in the layout give individuals those intimate spaces and the meandering pathways and the central courtyard are the public spaces - open for adaptation and interpretation, and malleable to suit the users. The circulation spaces are the threshold between the two - maintaining the balance and enabling permeable connections.
Few Walls and a Roof is the personification of this idea - the walls are like individuals in a family, each different from the other, and yet, they hold the roof together, creating a contiguous whole.
The building itself hosts an office connected to a sample house for the upcoming project. On approach, the gentle ramp receives one, which is bookended with two grass mounds rising from the ground. This orthogonal ensemble blanketed in the simplicity of a beige coat of paint intrigues an onlooker. On a facade where it does give you a peek, one sees fenestrations nestled in brick walls, crowned with concrete terrace parapets.
From between the rising grass mounds and the planar walls with quad punctures, as one looks inside, martial views of the greens of rising palms bathing in the light from the skylights set the tone for the serene ambience that awaits the visitor. At the entrance, the sample house is on the left and the courtyard opens up into the office on the right. The courtyard is the skeletal structure of the building, holding all disjointed pieces together and presenting them as a whole while allowing you to explore. It ushers in an air of finesse, overlaid with the serenity of greens that peek through disparate spaces, outgrowing the many rectangular plantations as they bask in the sun from the skylights.
The walls in debris-crushed bricks, in their chalky appearance, connect the mirroring lines between the dark Kadappa stone flooring and polished plywood ceiling. In the structure itself, these walls come together to hold the steel roof, a monolithic presence, stringing all pieces together in a contiguous whole. While indoors, one can only leave the scale of the weight of this roof - that covers and rests on the entire structure - to their imagination. During monsoons, dangling metal chains from the water channels allow the water to gush through and meet the ground.
On one side, the reception and waiting area overlook the courtyard from its ceiling-high glass wall with wooden battens that break the illusion of transparency and on the other, the offices and a cornered open seating area allow views of the vast grounds, aiding the anticipation of prospective home buyers. On the other side, a small corridor is flanked by a group of cabins and offices on both sides, forming a pack. Each space is defined by custom-crafted furniture in fluted wood, finished with simplicity and precision.
The office is built to be demolished, once the aligned project is complete. The roof, made of steel, can be taken off as a hat; the wall, made in debris-crushed bricks, can again be turned into debris; and the many greens can remain here, as always.
