News: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture has unveiled its competition-winning proposal to build Mumbai's tallest skyscraper.

The 400-metre-high, 116-storey Imperial Tower would become the tallest building in the Indian city if construction goes ahead.

The tower would have a slender, aerodynamic shape designed to "confuse the wind" and withstand strong currents, according to Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture.

Green terraces called "sky gardens" would also break up wind currents, say the architects, whose kilometre-high Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia is currently under construction.

The proposal includes plans for 132 residential units, some as large as 1,115 square metres, along with smaller serviced apartments.

Other projects by the same architects include a high-density, car-free city in China and a pair of 450 metre-high towers with glass scales – see all projects by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture.

At the start of the year we took a look at the ten tallest skyscrapers set to complete around the world in 2013 – see all skyscrapers on Dezeen.

Here's some more information from the architects:

Imperial Tower Competition
Mumbai, India

At 116 stories and 400 meters tall, Imperial Tower was designed to be the tallest building in the city and a prototype for Mumbai, a densely developed but mostly low-rise metropolis whose urban future revolves around tall residential towers.

The softly curvilinear form of this tall, elegantly slender tower is aerodynamically shaped to “confuse the wind,” minimising the negative effects of wind action on the tower. Wind vortex shedding is also mitigated by the north- and south-facing sky gardens, which break up wind currents around the tower. The sky gardens also provide unprecedented access to light, views and connection with the natural world that are unprecedented in Mumbai.

Imperial Tower will also offer the most spacious and luxurious residences in Mumbai. The 76,272- square-metre tower includes 132 residential units of between 195 and 1115 square metres, along with serviced apartments of between 72 and 252 square meters. All of the upper-storey condominiums offer breathtaking views of the Arabian sea.

Architecturally, the exterior wall provides a strong visual contrast with the heavy masonry cladding of most surrounding buildings. The exterior wall is highly sustainable, blocking heat gain and diffusing direct sunlight in the hot and humid climate of Mumbai.

The sustainability of Imperial Tower is also evident in its treatment of water, one of the area's most precious resources. Water from mechanical systems is collected and treated as greywater; rainfall is also collected for re-use by the units. High-efficiency mechanical systems, a green-wall podium and the use of native plants in the landscaping and sky gardens also adds to the project's sustainable performance. As+GG is also exploring a plan for kitchens and bathrooms to be pre-fabricated, possibly at a nearby mini-factory that would train a new local workforce.

Services: Architecture, interior design
Client: SD Corporation Pvt. ltd.
Function: Mixed-use
Facts: 400 m height, 116 storeys

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tallest tower appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch designer Pepe Heykoop has worked with people from one of Mumbai's poorest areas to transform traditional water carriers into leathery vases.

Based on techniques used in Heykoop's earlier Skin Collection, the project recycles Indian stainless steel water carriers called 'matkas' by covering them with high quality scrap leather.

The patchwork of leather forms random patterns which are different on every piece.

To produce them, Heykoop teamed up with Tiny Miracles Foundation, a charity that aims to raise one poor community living in Mumbai's red-light district to middle-class status within 10 years.

Locals are now employed by Heykoop to make the vases in a workshop in the neighbourhood.

Photographs are by Annemarijne Bax.

See more vases on Dezeen »

Here's some more information from Pepe Heykoop:

Using distinctive techniques from his Skin Collection, Matka Vases are designed by Pepe Heykoop and produced in his workshop located in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Mumbai, India, providing meaningful jobs, income and hope for the neediest.

Matka Vase is designed using recycled Matka's (traditional Indian stainless steel water carriers) and scrap leather. Every single vase contains a unique and personal story both of its previous owner and the person who gave it new life and use. Matka Vase has just recently gone into production and proceeds from sales are partly used to send street children to school.

As a reaction to the huge amount of waste of high quality leather created by the furniture industry (25 up to 30%), Pepe has designed the Skin Collection in 2011. In 2012, the Matka vase was born. The scraps generate a unique and random pattern as every piece has a different shape, giving the Matka a new life by turning waste into a Vase.

In this way, Matka's represent a signature product of Pepe Heykoop: they tell a story of change and growth, a different one for each unique piece of hand-made furniture. Thus it makes sense that his favorite materials are recycled; they are ready to tell a story and grow into a new product.

About Pepe Heykoop:

Dutch designer Pepe Heykoop (28) recently set up a workshop together with Tiny Miracles Foundation right in the middle of the poverty stricken, red light district of Mumbai, India. In 2010, he started working with this community when he started manufacturing Leather Lampshades with jobless slum moms. These Lampshades became a global success.

Pepe graduated from the prestigious Design Academy in Eindhoven in 2008 and has been awarded with multiple awards for his designs. Pepe has exhibited his works at numerous design shows including Milan, Singapore, Tokyo, New York and London and has his home base in Amsterdam, where most new concepts and products are born, based on unique low-cost techniques.

About Tiny Miracles Foundation:

Tiny Miracles Foundation is run by Pepe's cousin Laurien Meuter and focuses on one community in Mumbai, India. This 1,000 people community lives on the pavement in the middle of the red light district. The goal is to lift this community from 'very poor' to 'middle class' within 10 years and turn it into the 'City of Miracles'. Essential to making the community self-supporting is income generation. This will be realized through production in Pepe's workshop. Part of the proceeds are donated to the foundation to fund child education.

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by Pepe Heykoop appeared first on Dezeen.

This jumbled house in India features an elevated steel tunnel, bridged corridors and a rooftop swimming pool on stilts.

Designed by Indian studio Malik Architecture, House at Alibag is located on a hilltop facing the Mumbai skyline.

Faceted walls and ceilings line rooms throughout the house and are perforated by both rectangular and triangular windows.

At the centre of the three-storey building is an open courtyard, over-sailed by bridges connecting rooms on the first and second floors.

The angled tunnel that drives through the upper storeys of the house encloses a bedroom at each end, joined by another of these bridges.

The rooftop swimming pool shelters an external terrace at the rear of the house.

This is the second project by Malik Architecture on Dezeen in the last few days - see our earlier story here about a cantilevering office block next to a slum.

See also: more stories about projects in India.

Photography is by Bharath Ramamrutham.

Here are some more details from Malik Architecture:

House at Alibag

The Site:

The site for this home is a hill in Alibag, one which enjoys a stunning view, not only of the rolling contours surrounding it, but of the sea and the skyline of Mumbai in the distance. Conceptually, the design of the home is a departure from the “stepped terrace” typology that one would conventionally employ on a heavily contoured site.

Instead, we chose to deconstruct a cuboid that is tilted and suspended over the ground and seems to simultaneously ‘float’ and ‘flow’ down the hill.The contours of the hill have been used to organize the structure over 3 levels.

The ‘tube’ contains 2 large bedroom suites at different levels with a large interstitial void that is inhabited by floating connections.The creation of singular sensory experiences has been the primary organizing and sculpting vector.

Numerous geometric inflections and articulations are designed to engage the senses in unconventional ways. A walk through the house is meant to yield unique moments of being suspended in space, of intimate enclosure, of vertiginous assaults but most importantly, of being connected to nature. The structure follows the design philosophy with concrete planes making contact with the ground, while steel floats above it. The home seems to conduct a constant dialogue with the ground on which it rests; it is informed by the earth but chooses at certain junctures to thrust over a precipice, completely oblivious of it.

The hilltop location of this house makes its occupants privy to some spectacular views of the sea as well as of the surrounding terrain. It is the fact that every space is designed to partake of these views that renders the house unique. The transition form panoramic to framed portraits and the constant three dimensional articulation of the viewing platform is what generates an experience that transcends the pure visual and ventures into a multi-sensory realm. The only restriction was the self imposed one with regards to retaining the integrity of the hill and maximizing the sustainability of the development.

A second home on the same site as house no. 1 was commissioned only weeks after construction began on the first house.  We were now faced with the conundrum of creating a complementary foil to the distinctly extroverted structure that was perched on the apex of the hill. On the one hand we felt that the second home ought to partake of the   same    stunning    views    that    presented themselves to the first house, but any significant built up mass would not only compete with but   also   vitiate   the   geometric singularity of the first home.

The   solution presented self in the form of an existing degraded concrete structure that was intended to be a home for the land’s previous owner.  By locating the second home on this footprint and by making use of the already excavated area, we were able    to   submerge   the   house    beneath the ground.  The only trace of development, when viewed from the first home, was a crystalline    fragment emerging from the earth.  The home is self effacing, a more discrete and introverted alter-ego of its hilltop sibling.

Faceted Roof Design:

The main roof of the living room and verandah is a re-interpretation of the traditional clay tiled roof, but re-designed for better performance. It has been parametrically manipulated to dip and extend to provide weather protection for the main pool deck, the entrance verandah and the car porch. In addition it sweeps upwards to allow headroom for the stair leading to the upper level.High wind speeds and heavy rains necessitated re-analysis of the traditional pitched roof which while performing well in homogenous spatial conditions, failed to meet the multiple performance criteria we required.

Floating Infinity Pool with Verandah Below:

Part of the client’s brief was the desire to have the primary living space (living room) and verandah in close proximity to the swimming pool. We used the contours of the hill to design a stilted pool that satisfied the client’s requirements and also provided an auxiliary shaded verandah below it opened onto a large garden and which could be used in inclement weather.The knife edge was created to merge the pool foreground with the background of the Arabian Sea.

Tubular Steel Truss

The ‘Tube’ that rests on the two blocks is tilted at an angle that is almost identical to the natural slope of the ground and with a single gesture, a tangible link to the hill is created, whilst simultaneously generating a physically liberated space. The earth is forced into the centre of the home, whose vertical proportions complement the intrinsic horizontality of the geometry. Similar programs are linked by the volume and its skins provide weather protection to the bridge connections hovering within the courtyard.

The concept of the floating tube allowed for the elevated perch which was desired to give the occupant the best possible view of the surroundings without creating large obtrusive footprints on the ground.The house functions as a tool to interpret the landscape. At numerous junctures, the object dematerializes to create a sense of floating amongst the elements, and its unique strength is the varying experiential conditions it creates at different points in space and time.

Category: Residential
Location: Alibag, Maharashtra, India
Client: Private
Plot area: 7 acres
Built-up area: 11500 sq. ft.
Project cost: 5,00,00,000 (5 Cr.)
Commencement date: March 2007
Completion date: September 2009

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Pointed cantilevers project above an office block that is sandwiched between a corporate complex and a slum in Mumbai (photographs by Edmund Sumner).

Designed by Indian studio Malik Architecture, the GMS Grande Palladium building has a faceted exterior of tessellated glass and ridged aluminium.

Six floors of office accommodation are raised onto a podium eight metres above the ground, creating a terrace and thoroughfare at street level.

Penthouse office suites for the client and his son are contained in the two uppermost floors and within the narrow cantilevers.

A cafe, gym and members club are located on the podium floor, which can be accessed by car via an external ramp.

Two basement floors provide car parking.

This building is one of many recent stories to feature crazy cantilevers, following a house with projecting concrete slabs and a hotel with a mirrored underside - see all our stories about cantilevers here.

Here's some more information from the architects:

GMS Grande Palladium

Project Description

The uniqueness of this project is that it operates on multiple levels. On one hand it uses technology and intelligent design to improve the working environment of its inhabitants, while working inclusively in an urban context.

On the other hand, it is a critical commentary on some of the antiquated notions that have plagued contemporary commercial design in the subcontinent.

The eschewment of ornamentation, the treatment of structure as skin, the repudiation of self-aggrandizing atriums, the moulding of building volumes to perform multiple functions simultaneously, the treatment of landscape as an integral part of development and an exploration of its varying moods, the focus on sustainability, the holistic approach to design and execution are a direct result of a critical analysis of the exigent and often superficial buildings proliferating in the subcontinent.

Commercial and corporate architecture in Mumbai has evolved a generic idiom and nowhere is this more apparent than at the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), where a myriad of glass monoliths exist side by side; one indistinguishable from the other.

The site for the GMS Grande Palladium, located at Kalina, is but a stones throw from Bandra Kurla Complex.

The street interface for almost all existing buildings at BKC is a three level podium. This provides a definitive barrier between the street and the building. A heavy, almost impenetrable profile is created which presents almost no visual and physical connection between the street and the building.

The area is outside Mumbai’s Heritage District and therefore there were no constraints as far as conserving existing architecture as well as, no connection need be established between the existing architecture and our site.

Essentially we were given a Tabula Rasa, free of compromise or complication of what stood around it.

With GMS Grande Palladium, we have made an attempt, through consistent data mining of various conditions, to imbue what has been a hitherto sterile, symbol driven genre of Architecture, with logic and meaningful content It was imperative that we make an informed departure from the existing architecture surrounding our site, and, in the absence of any valid programmatic density within the project brief itself, we harvested site, climatic and urban constrains as moulding vectors for our concept.

Four levels of generic commercial space are bound by a series of faceted, profiled aluminium planes, a subtle nod to the random agglomerations of the Dharavi slums (Asia's largest slum development), which is located only minutes away from our site, and whose individual tenements are sheathed in scrap corrugated metal sheets.

We hoisted the building 8.0m above the ground thus liberating the street level to be inhabitated by trees, water and judiciously scaled lobbies and a common café, thus eliminating the presence of massive built up form at the street level. This represents an inversion of the Bandra Kurla typology by creating a solution that is more inclusive to street communication.

The transition from the street to inside the property is experienced seamlessly, one drives through a gate, up a ramp to access the podium level. The ramp is flanked on one side by a landscaped garden, the slopes of which transition from the entrance stilt level to the upper podium level.

In a city like Mumbai where green areas are diminishing everyday, this garden provides an oasis of relief from the hardscape of the surrounding areas.

The clubhouse emerges from this landscape as a sculptural element of glass and profiled aluminium. In most other buildings the Clubhouse is provided on the uppermost levels, but in view of better access and usability, we chose to place the clubhouse on the stilt level with a double height gym space.

A mezzanine forms the yoga room over the gym and can be accessed from the garden as well. A double height open to sky court brings in light and ventilation into the gym room. A juice bar and spa on the stilt level serve as areas for rejuvenation and relaxation.

The 8.0M high podium is designed to address functional issues as well as theoretical inconsistencies that we have observed in the design of commercial and corporate properties in the vicinity. Four months of heavy rains mean that a covered drop-off point is mandatory.

The suspended building volume negates the need for extraneous canopies, and the ubiquitous atrium has been replaced with functionally scaled lobbies, that use space efficiently and visually include the landscaped podium and allow the eye to roam unfettered to the grass berm beyond.

Water has been expressed in two ways; a shallow water sheet explores the reflective and depth inducing properties of water, while adjacent to it, raked and textured stone surfaces generate rippling water surfaces; a gesture that not only explores its auditory properties, but also geometrically links it to the building structure.

A common café is skinned with canted glass walls and an outdoor dining area allows inhabitants to sit amidst the trees on the podium.

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The superstructure is composed entirely of steel with a 16.0m wide span central column grid providing flexible workspace, while deflected structural shear skins transmit cantilever loads to the ground. The structural skins are expressed internally by recessing the internal membranes between the structural members.

The four typical floors are designed to be leased out. Each floor has been divided into two wings which may be leased out independently with a common lobby space opening into independent reception areas. The two wings may be combined if desired to create a bigger office space by removing the dividing wall between the wings. The structure also facilitates higher floor heights with the false ceiling dropping down in the cabins and lobby to accommodate services.

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The fragmented roof office of the client visually disconnects itself from the typical floors, the only tangible link being a section of the structural skin turning over to generate the faceted roof and glass wall membranes of the upper two levels.

This was the only part of the design brief where the customized program was known. The office was placed on the North end occupying two internally connected office floors. A double height cut out in the floor plate visually connects the two levels together. The sense of space and openness in this office space alludes to the old buildings of South Mumbai with higher floor heights and double height spaces. A projected roof on the East and West facade facilitates large floor to ceiling windows which flood the interior with daylight.

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The client and his son occupy suites at the two extremities of a cantilevered, north facing tube that punctures the upper level and projects into space.

Besides the regular municipal guidelines (height, setbacks, minimum landscaped area, etc.), there were not too many planning restrictions. We encountered stiff resistance from the planning commission when we suggested the idea of the podium, but after numerous meetings and thoroughly scrutinizing our justification of it being a new form of street interface that operated inclusively as well as the fact that it reduced the amount of built up mass at the lower levels of the property, thus allowing us to increase the landscape footprint at the street level. They allowed us to proceed as they were convinced that it would set a precedent for commercial properties trying to establish a better urban connection.

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The North façade, as originally designed intruded into the setback line, however, the planning commission allowed us to continue with the original scheme when it was explained that the North façade helped form an important visual connection between the office spaces and the landscaped garden below as well as facilitate the daylighting of interior spaces, thus reducing the use of artificial light.

In the absence of rigid planning restrictions we have created a non-conformous building where the volume is shaped by the diurnal cycles of the sun, an even distribution of floor area and by the desire to visually lengthen the proportion of the structure. Material affixation and size and shape of fenestrations have been decided by the orientation of the building.

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West façade

The street facing West façade is clad with seamless corrugated aluminum broken by small sun shaded fenestrations. The south-west sun in this part of the northern hemisphere has the harshest glare, the sun shades therefore, have been designed to project out on the south side to cut out the glare. These projections rake back on the north to maximize exposure to the cool northern light.

East façade

The East façade is skinned with laminated glass in order to suffuse the interior spaces with natural light. On the upper floors the skin cants up, thereby opening the fenestrations more towards the northern direction. Similar to the fenestrations on the West Facade, these fenestrations are designed with raked back sun shades.

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North Façade

The North façade is made up entirely of triangular pieces of laminated glass interspersed by skin truss members; the façade is raked back on the upper levels. This deliberate gesture was made in order to suffuse the interior spaces with as much natural daylight as possible, and also provides a visual connection to the slopes of the landscaped garden below while cutting out any glare.

South Facade

In this region of the world, the South sun is the harshest, with a strong glare and warmth. Also the southern property line abuts the back of the Trade Centre Building, which was not a desirable view. The major services were thus stacked on the southern end presenting a dead facade of shear truss members clad in Kalzip. A few horizontal openings have been provided to bring light into the service area.

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Chris Lee and Kapil Gupta of Serie Architects have completed a banqueting hall in Mumbai, India, which has a structure like an avenue of trees.

Called The Tote, the project forms part of a renovation and extension to a series of colonial buildings.

It comprises a banquet hall and reception room, plus a restaurant and bar.

The design was inspired by trees on the site and incorporates branching steel columns with an I-shaped section.

Lighting is installed at the points where these branches meet the ceiling.

The walls of the bar upstairs are clad in faceted wooden panels, arranged according to a pattern of crossing tree branches that is picked out in bronze.

More about Serie Architects on Dezeen: Blue Frog Lounge

Photographs are by Fram Petit.

Here's some text from the architects:

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THE TOTE - SERIE ARCHITECTS

A series of disused buildings from Mumbai’s colonial past set within the Mumbai Race Course are to be converted to form a series of restaurant and bars.

The conservation guidelines call for the preservation of the roof profile for three-quarters of the buildings and full conservation for the remaining one-quarter.

The interesting aspect of the site, however, lies not in the colonial buildings but in the open spaces covered by mature Rain Trees. These spaces are shaded throughout the year by the thinly wide spread leaves of the Rain Trees, allowing almost the entire proposed program to occur outdoors.

Our proposal attempts to continue this idea of a continuously differentiated space, with no clear boundary, into the envelope of the conservation building. A new structure is proposed within the old building envelope.

The structural system adopted here is that of a tree-branch. The propagation of the branching system along the longitudinal section of the conserved building is differentiated in its growth along the transverse section. This differentiation reorganizes the old buildings with new dining programs.

Therefore each dining program (wine bar, restaurant, pre-function and banquet facilities) is captured within a different spatial volume, defined by the variable degree of the branching structure.

As the structure branches into finer structural members as it approaches the ceiling. When the branches touch the ceiling, the ceiling plane is punctured with a series of openings corresponding to the intersection of the branches with the purlins and rafters. These openings become light coves and slits.

Construction Notes: The construction of the Tote was a complex combination of restoration works for the Heritage Building and the demolition and reconstruction of the the Banquet wing.

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The tree structure was designed to be a steel truss and the challenge lay in working through the construction system compatible with local skills. Rather than looking at steel fabricators within the building construction sector, we sourced boiler fabricators for high precision work. We explored two sectional profiles for the truss, a box section and an I-section.

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The choice of the I-section was based on the fact that the web could be laser cut to ensure dimensional precision, while relying on the skilled fabricators to weld the flanges on and assemble the truss accurately. The truss geometry was altered for smooth branching as opposed to an angular one to reduce the number of weld joints. The success of the installation is that the final product conceals the fabrication method and appears to be a system of curved sections. The interior of the Lounge Bar on the upper level is an intricate arrangement of 3-dimensional, faceted wooden panelling, acoustically treated with sound proofing material. The pattern of the panelling is a series of trees with intersecting branches.

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The false ceiling is a complex arrangement of three lighting systems built up in plasterboard and plywood coves. They offer the client flexibility to alter the lighting effects based on event type.

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We devised a 3 point co-ordinate system to map out the pattern onto the walls of the heritage wing, given the 3 dimensional nature of the panelling and that each intersecting point had a totally different x,y and z co-ordinate. This system allowed local craftsmen using fairly primitive tools to achieve a high level of fit and finish for the interior works. The faceted panelling is finished in walnut veneer with bronze channels making up the tree pattern.

Building Type: Banqueting hall, Restaurant & Bar
Location: Mumbai, India
Area: 2500 sqm
Design: Christopher Lee and Kapil Gupta
Project Team: Yael Gilad, Dharmesh Thakker, Suril Patel, Purva Jamdade, Advait Potnis, Vrinda Seksaria, Udayan Mazumdar, Mayank Ojha and Atish Rathod
Design Phase: October2006- September 2007
Construction Phase: December 2007- October 2009

Structural Engineering: Facet Construction Engineering Pvt. Ltd
Mechanical and Electrical Engineering: AARK Consulting
Lighting Design: Abhay Wadhwa Associates
Sound Design: Nexus Audio Video with Ole Christensen
Landscape Design: Apeiron Architects
Project Management: Masters Management Consultants
Metal Fabrication: Unique Concrete Technologies
Interior Contractors: Interex
Liaison Architects: Barai Architects and Engineers

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