Prudent Corporate House is built on a plot area of 333 m2 and is situated at prominent crossroads in the city. The brief was to design the corporate house for Prudent group, a financial advisory services company based in Ahmedabad. Our scope involved designing the architecture and the interior design for the project, including working with various service consultants.
It was clear at the onset that due to the compact floor space; the corporate house will only have the offices which require a public interface while the other back offices remain in remote locations. Therefore, this building was needed to add to the group’s identity as it sits strategically near the intersection.
The building uses a simple spatial strategy where there is a column-free flexible workspace attached to a service bay with the elevator, staircase, and other services. The open workspaces allow for multiple permutations for the space usage and are used to accommodate workstation configurations, manager cabins and director floor as per the requirements.
The building uses a minimalist approach to the construction of structural elements and uses raw building materials as the final finish. The exposed RCC is the primary material in the façade, along with wooden operable louvers on the southern façade, creating an almost monochrome façade strategy. This minimal material strategy was to make a distinction among the surrounding buildings. The front façade holds the identity signage for ‘Prudent’ in color, further accentuating the monochrome aesthetics of the building.
The use of operable wooden louvers in the complete south façade is a climatic response to the harsh sunlight in Ahmedabad. This operability allows for a user-controlled view and light in all the spaces. All the faces of the façade have different proportions of fenestration to effectively benefit from natural light and eliminate excessive sunlight into the building.
The interior spaces continue the minimalist material usage strategy by using polished Kota stone as the flooring, exposed RCC slabs, and wooden furniture. The lighting, air conditioning and fire sprinklers were suspended from the ceiling and were exposed with no use of false ceilings to hide them.
The building has two entrances, one formal entry through the entrance porch and the second one from the parking through the service core leading to the stair cabin. The formal entry leads to the reception, which connects to the meeting room, and the service core on the east connects all the floors vertically. The terrace has a tensile structure to provide pleasant semi-open dining space for staff.
Team:
Architect: Groundwork Architecture
Structural Design: AMU Consulting Engineers
Plumbing Consultant: Techno Engineers
HVAC Consultant: Anjaria Associates
Electrical Consultant: Apoorva Parikh Consultant
Civil Contractor: PS Mistry Constructions
Photography: Dhrupad Shukla
Material Used:
1. Face Systems: Exterior vertical Rigid Louver System
2. TDW: Readymade Loose Furniture
3. Wipro Lighting: Lineos - Hanging Linear Lights
4. Shailja: Aluminium Windows
5. UltraTech Cement: Portland Cement
6. Modiguard: Laminated Glass
7. Omega: MRL Elevators
8. Unitex: Carpet Tile
9. Mitsubishi Electric: Air Conditioning
10. Jaquar: Sanitary Fixtures and CP Fittings
