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DESCRIPTION
The Architecture of the Chimes Building, Gurgaon is about creating public spaces that are accessible and enable
the experience of nature within the spaces of the building, symbolizing life inside the building. The design of the
building addresses issues of sustainability, sociability, making room for nature, and program flexibility. The
building mass is specially developed to demonstrate a novel solution for a multi-tenanted office building with
floor plate size flexibility to create a mix of tenants from various service sectors and industries. To create a high
profile address, it was envisioned to organize each floor as potentially heterogeneous open-plan environments
that can be combined or be separated by user requests with controlled indoor environments and amenities to
suit a variety of needs for large and small businesses organized to share common community resources set up in
the building.
Spatial Planning
The design of the building emphasizes diversity of all kinds: juxtapositions of people, functions, built forms,
spaces, and activities are just some of the fundamental elements that help encourage an inclusive and sustainable
public sphere that thrives at all times of the day and night. The building is raised up from the ground on pilotis,
allowing free-flowing open spaces under the building shaded from the harsh sun, with a variety of water pools
and guided streams cooling the air, and plants growing within and around the building on the site to cool the
ground. A variety of public spaces are created at ground level that is accessible, shaded and close to nature. These
spaces encourage serendipitous meetings, foster community engagement and active participation in urban work
life.
At the ground, the concept of openness, spaces flowing together, plays a major factor in the design. The public
areas including a restaurant/café are located on the ground floor, with smaller spaces to encourage people to
meet spontaneously for coffee or for informal meetings. Various spaces for public functions are offered- an open
air performing arts theatre, a cafeteria and a future exhibition space, and a restaurant. A number of available
conference rooms, meeting lounges form a complete sociable and efficient center for the complex to respond to
all nature of business requirements. Sky terraces attached to each floor plate connect to nature during the work
day.
The Visuality and Sociability of the Journey path
To maximize the use of green spaces and the views from within and outside and make use of the ground,
otherwise lost to building footprint, the design places the gardens around glass-lined movement corridors and
Staircase cores. The journey path through the spaces of the building, Lift lobbies, holding areas, social spaces,
cafeteria and reception are located along the way and designed as people places that suggest the idea of diverse
experience of graded light and shaded spaces, landscape variation to include plant and animal life (etched into
the stone surfaces), air, earth, and water as part of each of the pauses and transition experiences. Visual
connections are made through glass courtyards, corridors, and lobbies, together with the complex
interconnections and interpenetrations of interior spaces, the interplay of light and choices of just a few material
finishes. The symbolism of the landscape and the architectural artifact are intended to enliven the whole
ensemble.
Form Development and Building Façades
The form development follows the idea of raising the building on pilotis to relieve the ground and give back the
landscape to the ground- creating a sociable and welcoming space of the entrance reception- a glass cube set in a
water garden, using plants as tree cover and water as climate modulators. A variety of water bodies and plants
growing around the and inside the building to cool the ground, and transform it into a space with positive energy,
shaded social spaces, and graded light, open spaces and light wells working as courtyards that relieve the bulk of
the form and supply natural light to the inside of the office floor plates.
Flexible Floor Plates
The floor plates are modular, independently equipped with amenities/ facilities for modern office requirements
and can be combined into heterogeneous open plan environments to suit a variety of needs for a mix of large and
small businesses sharing common community resources set up in the building. With this profile, the flexibility in floor plate size makes for best possible marketing to create a mix of tenants from various service sectors and
industries
Regulating Heat Gain- Solar Facade
The Façade design is guided by its visibility and response to the street corner, visibility from the surrounding
spaces and the main roads and to the climatic considerations of the solar path, Natural Light penetration and
Breezes. It is equally about imaging a sensible notion of contemporariness, with formal and material choice that
echo the historic form of massive Indian wall making that rejects heat and the high sun, but allows filtered natural
light. The North allows light, but rejects reflected heat, the ribbon windows on the west, east and south faces are
set high on the floor plate to allow the deeper penetration of a limited amount of the harsher western and
southern light, but freely allows internal courtyard reflected light and North light to penetrate the plates through
large treated glass surfaces. The heat gain thus reduced is further mitigated by the use of use of heat reflective
paint and the insulated wall section.
A number of strip windows in the otherwise massive walls are used to visually connect the interior and the
exterior and is mitigated by the use of anti-dazzle e-glass so people do not lose touch with the natural
environment while at work. Outsiders get curious glimpses of light and activity through the façade that activates
the otherwise solid building as a place of action.
Sustainable “Carbon Footprint”: The architecture is used to develop the building marked by energy efficiency,
0perational convenience, low operational cost and optimized investment costs. It focuses not only on the façade,
sun shading, and lighting details but above all, also on minimizing the energy consumption of the building while
optimizing natural light consumption. The building is glazed on the benign North face and on shaded facades with
higher performance glass responsive to the conditions. On exposed and direct heat receiving faces a solar façade
of small openings set up high on the floor allow less direct heat and maximizes penetrations of light into the plate.
Parking and Transportation: The insatiable demand for parking is met by the provision for a double stack parking
system (that addresses the needs of commuters), extra capacity preferred parking spaces for car poolers, and
parking for the electric shuttle to connect with the future metro nearby. This facilitates an office building without
visible cars and frees the ground to landscape and a pleasing outdoor environment.
Returning the Ground to Landscape: The building consists four interconnected floor plate blocks of varied size
and scale organized around climate-modifying, natural-light-giving courtyards. These floor plates are
independently equipped with amenities/ facilities for all modern office requirements.
Contextual Responses
Modular Back-Up Generation
Thermal Storage Chillers
Security and Surveillance
Independent Controlled Floors
Replenishing Ground Water
Recycling Waste and Water
Sociability-Features and Movement