Our project is a captivating blend of spacious retail and office areas and interactive semi-open spaces. This unique combination, born from the client’s initial brief, has been taken to the next level, creating a design that is an urban landmark. The sleek glass façade and assertive urban presence reflect the city’s lively spirit, while the optimised access and visibility ensure a dynamic front that interacts with both intersecting streets.
Project Name: A Landmark Commercial Space in a Corner Plot of Banglore’s Bustling Core
Studio Name: Design Thoughts Architects
This detailed blog explores the various levels of the corner plot commercial marvel. The building rises with a sleek glass façade that maximises natural light on all floors and reflects the constantly changing urban skyline. The design’s transparency creates a strong visual link between the inner areas and the city outside, which blends in with the lively street activity surrounding it.
Importance of a commercial project
A commercial project in Banglore is more like an urban project involving public interaction. As this allows multi-tenant fit-outs, it is essential to consider the comfort of ordinary people in designing, unlike in a home where the client is the mastermind.
More than just a stand-alone development, the building is a cornerstone of the surrounding neighbourhood. The design, crafted for the betterment of the community, extends the street edge with spacious pedestrian pathways and shaded entry zones. It offers a timeless architectural presence while honouring Bangalore’s rapidly changing metropolitan character, fostering a sense of connection and engagement.
Design Program:
- Ground + Lower Levels: Activated by high-footfall retail shops, cafes, and showrooms that open out to the street, encouraging public engagement and movement across the corner frontage.
- Our typical office floors are not just spaces but flexible, open-plan layouts designed for modern work environments. Each floor plate is optimised for light, air, and adaptability to suit a range of tenants—from startups to established firms. This adaptability ensures that the building can cater to the diverse needs of its occupants, instilling a sense of reassurance and confidence in its functionality.
- Studios & Semi-Open Work Areas: Located on higher levels and the intermediate terraces, these zones support collaborative and creative work. The semi-open design provides breakout areas and breathing space, perfect for design studios, media houses, and co-working setups.
Facade material and understanding
Its defining characteristic is the building’s full-height glass facade, a sleek, contemporary skin that lends the structure a feeling of lightness and permeability. Thermal comfort is guaranteed by high-performance glazing, which also provides daylighting and broad views. Subtle vertical fins and shade mechanisms interrupt the facade, adding rhythm and reducing glare—two crucial functions in Bangalore’s environment. These shading mechanisms add interest to the corner plot commercial and provide the necessary privacy for the studio spaces.
The lower floors are transparent to the street, inviting passersby into double-height retail spaces that host flagship stores, cafes, or curated showrooms. The building ensures smooth flow and easy access with separate vertical circulation for retail and office visitors, as the circulation core is centrally located in the western part of the building.
Design evolution
Although this project is open to the public, a few design changes with the client were essential to the final facade design. Let us discuss this in detail to understand how this works for our team and the clients.
Here, we observe an alternative pattern of beams running through the glass facade with a small wooden cladding detail in the semi-open area. However, the clients wanted a dedicated provision to include the branding for the retail shops. They also liked to explore a different cladding texture for the studios on the top floors.
Although this gives a complete look to the building, a louvred semi-open area was unnecessary. So, our designers gave another modified facade detailing with more regions to include branding and a utilising Louvre facade for the studio spaces.
