Greenr-Strangr

Avesh Gaur

• Interior Design

Embedded in the evergreen community of Greater Kailash in New Delhi, Greenr as a construct of healthy and vegan eating has been a staple in the market that has been long loved by not only its neighbouring residents, but loyalists pouring in from across the city. The collaboration between Studiio Dangg and the Greenr team materialized as they decided to magnify the community they had built so far through a renewed and reinvigorated space. Greenr-Strangr has been borne through the hard work, and a monumental liaison with Mohit Yadav, one of our most revered clients, and Devika Bhalla as the stylist.

Upon visiting the site, we observed that the space looked akin to a relinquished residence where a lot of families lived through the ages, and spun their own stories. Almost as if exposing age-old fireplace ceramic tiles from under a wooden panelling in a knackered, and dilapidated Venetian home, we husked the numerous layers of diverse materials laid on top of one another by different restaurants and brands that inhabited the space in the past . We found the base structure of the site indented with the battle scars of all the materials that were ladened over it through the years. The unveiled walls and floors of the site promptly felt hospitable, snug, and very intimate. So much so, that the decision to retain its blemished characteristics instantly seemed to be the most natural route for the revived space to take - of treating the site as an adaptive reuse project, to retain the feeling of an abandoned home being occupied by its new residents.

The uncovering of old materials exposed beautiful red bricks, old plaster with fractures of hacking done to take new materials, and unmasked a lot of old drilling, and nail punctures in the walls - almost mimicking those blemishes that enhance the beauty. The run-down flooring was treated with typical IPS flooring to further embroider the over-altered essence of the site.

Split between three floors, the volumes are separated through staggering sets of staircases, and a large cutout in the floor overlooking the coffee counter on the first floor. To effuse the soul through the idea of a housing society, and to encourage communal conversation as a design dialogue, the volumes enact the inter-floor connection of a typical Mumbai chawl. The internal volume play imitates the dynamics of a quintessential chawl, enabling an augmentation of conversation and discussion through varying levels between people, orchestrating a sense of community - not just through a literal chat, but also injecting the space with immense curiosity to amplify the need to peek over into every corner visible throughout the extent of the space.

To magnify the nucleus of collaboration that Greenr stands for, the cafe offers activities aplenty for the patrons to interact more with not just the space, but also with each other through the various shelves lined with commodities from various homegrown artists and brands, that further boast of the close-knit community that Greenr has always intended to curate as a brand.

In any typical building, as one ascends through a space, the play of light intensifies. Contrary to this, Greenr upholds the maximum amount of light play on its lowest floor, and as the volume rises, the space becomes all the more intimate and darker, leading people up to the terrace bar, inducing an atypical speakeasy energy.

Through the vertical rise, the space becomes darker and more intimate to push the change in mood for drinking, and communing. The terrace carries a design language in the form of terracotta bricks as the major flooring, and roofing material sandwiching the space in the sameness of materiality. The continual concrete benches lined with a splatter of homely cushions, and vintage peg tables, insinuate the spirit of many mini groups becoming a large one through the sheer proximity of people. The casual chairs with their quintessential thrifted look induce the arty “devil may care” attitude which as thrown together as it looks, is carefully crafted to lend the space this very particular behaviour. The enclosed area with a solid oakwood bar and cabinetry, has a nostalgic old-school bar aura, built in one’s home to host guests, all complete with a mix of vintage and modern to draw out the “just moved in” essence of the space. Indigenous to India, the chick-mat blinds lend privacy to the indoor space on the terrace.

Greenr was designed to be a space that felt like home. From familiar faces, to community gatherings, to vertically sprawling masses that overlay a blanket of comfort and conversation. Greenr-Strangr, is the ultimate friendly neighbourhood collective, drawing people in as a safe harbour to spend hours on end in silent companionship.