This office has been designed for a dynamic software development firm engaged in designing websites. The office required workstations for about 20 persons in various departments, with allied functions such as the CEO’s cabin, a small meeting/ reading room, suitable storage, and toilet and pantry facilities. The space was a typical rectangular gālā in an industrial estate in central Mumbai. The client wanted an office that would be inspiring to work in and project the personality of the firm as a place with attitude.
While the modalities of the program were very specific, when analyzed in a larger context, the requirements of the client were representative of a business pattern which has been developing in Mumbai in the recent years. Subscribing to the inherently fluid, indeterminate, and highly competitive model of the contemporary market, the mantras of these businesses are Efficiency (monetary and temporal), Flexibility and Attitude. The process and product of the design for this office were seen as an experiment at the evolution of a design language that would emerge from these particular characteristics.
Drawing from research studies of street markets and industrial architecture of Mumbai, the concept we hit upon was the modus-operandi of the ‘Patch-On’. The defining idea of the Patch-on concept is that the construct is made up of multiple forms, layers, materials, textures and even ‘aesthetics’ which come together in ways that cannot always be pre-controlled. The final product of these somewhat accidental encounters between independent entities is accretive and non-stylized. The junctions between these entities are not concealed but revealed and sometimes even exaggerated. Yet importantly, the overall effect is not that of violent disjunction but of a logical, if unexpected, coming together of objects. To achieve this through design, the project was conceived in three aspects: the Skin, the Components and the Assembly. The Skin consisted of crafting the existing shell of Galvanized Iron. At particular locations this skin was peeled away from the walls to create partitions within the space. To offset the opacity and coldness of the G.I. paneling, and to give enclosed spaces a translucent depth, fluorescent Perspex acrylic was introduced selectively in the Skin.
The Components were loose objects that inhabited the skin: tables, chairs, storage units, pin-up boards, which were designed as modular units and given out for pre-fabrication. The storage units were colour-coded, large and small marked differently.
The Assembly was the final coming together of the Components in the Skin. In coherence with the Patch-on method, these components were put together with nuts-bolts, screws, and metal clips which added their own random punctuations to the space along with the colour-coded storage boxes.
What resulted through the Patch-on method was a combination of modular and custom-made elements in a distinctive work environment that, although prefabricated, had none of the repetitive indifference of a modular furniture system. Inspired by systems of design in popular culture, kitsch and industrial imagery come together to create a spatial experience that is hard-edged yet ephemeral.
