Located on Mg Road, Bangalore, Maserati is a brand of Ferrari that offers extreme luxury. How does your building represent luxury? How are the cars positioned inside? The designer’s entire job role revolved around these questions. Adding magic to an existing heritage building with thick walls was the designer’s addition of extending the front and adding a four-floor skeleton structure, while keeping its backside unchanged since it has a very residential scale with three meters of ceiling height. As sports cars, the cars are all low-lying, barely 1.2 meters high, bouncing back the 40 feet of glass ceiling. It’s becomes quite dramatic during the day with lots of shadows, and about 10,000 Lux of sunlight, which no illumination could match. As the designer, Ar. Mueen intended to bring the cars to life, subjecting them to real-time conditions.
Project Name-Maserati Showroom
Studio Name- Ds2 Architecture
Designed By- Ar.Mueen Haris
It gives you that sheer sense of luxury to know there is so much volume with four floors rising 40 feet tall. Further, when it rains, it looks different when it’s sunny, you can see how the car responds to the various hues of sunlight. It’s almost like trying to create an outdoor atmosphere. At night, there is a mix of high Lux levels making the space appear like an ice cube. Inside this large ice cube, the glittering cars becoming the focal point.
Pastel hues act as silent backdrop, empowering the cars and thus becoming the focus. Along with that, a lot of challenges with glazing, lighting, air conditioning, all of that, which became an integral part of the design process. Talking of, materials preferred were those that would not wear out easily, doesn’t show serious signs of aging, and could be easily maintained in pristine condition, such as glass, it’s almost timeless. Aluminium panels are used as they also don’t show signs of aging and italian tiles are used for flooring.
In keeping with Maserati’s brand colours, a lot of blue could be seen indoors, while the yard resembles any luxury bungalow with lots of space and good landscaping. When the test drive cars are parked outside, usually, there are many people who gather, click pictures for social media, which is a passive marketing strategy. In this way, the brand is boosted exponentially. People come in, take pictures, tag Maserati, move around as it’s almost like a public place.
Further, Maserati has only three stores in India, Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore, while Delhi caters to the north, Mumbai to Gujarat, and Maharashtra market, which is a huge market. But if you see down south all four states come down to Bangalore.
