The image of a modern office is thinly partitioned open workstations with limited or no privacy, designed with a one-size-fits-all layout. Even with overlapping DNA, no two individuals are truly alike in a family, similarly, individuals in a work family function in their own separate ways. Nonetheless, in both cases, a designer caters to the sum and the parts, as we did for the sales office of an upcoming residential infrastructure project in Ahmedabad - Few Walls and a Roof.
Each space, a bit disjoined from the other, is designed to be adaptable and to suit an individual’s requirements. The scattered cubes in the layout give individuals those intimate spaces and the meandering pathways and the central courtyard are the public spaces - open for adaptation and interpretation, and malleable to suit the users. The circulation spaces are the threshold between the two - maintaining the balance and enabling permeable connections.
Few Walls and a Roof is the personification of this idea - the walls are like individuals in a family, each different from the other, and yet, they hold the roof together, creating a contiguous whole. The office is built to be demolished, once the aligned project is complete. The roof, made of steel, can be taken off as a hat; the wall, made in debris-crushed bricks, can again be turned into debris; and the many greens can remain here, as always.
- Interiors: inpractice
- Landscape: Akshar Landscape Architects
- Photos: Vivek Eadara