“Architecture surrounds us; we interact with it on a daily basis. But what of those buildings that seem to not want to interact with the context that they are in as a form of protest?”
Sitting in Gurugram, is an office building that celebrates the rawness of material and the idea of craft. In its design, the building is a rejection of the commonplace. It has made a conscious choice to not interact with the urbanity that surrounds it; in doing so, it becomes a stronger comment on the context.
Location
Gurugram
Typology
Office
Site area
3894 m2
Built area
2100 m2
The building primarily houses the offices of a paper mill. The owner, a patron of contemporary art, had transformed these spaces into a refuge for Modern Art. It seems fitting that a building that challenges the conventional notions of an office space borrows from the principles of Modernism; rejecting the ornamental, and embracing the minimal.
It has allowed everyday construction materials to redefine themselves. Concrete has been used as a material capable of gentle poetry. The brick forms that have been used have been specifically customized to lend the façade its seemingly fluid form; giving the illusion of the building swaying.
The conversation is very local; it celebrates craft, and infuses life in the materials.
In a time where buildings with skin that did not age were becoming popular, the building expresses a surface that is allowed to age, creating an expression of its own.
The corten steel skin opens up into an exposed brick courtyard. Suspended walls and hand-crafted bricks make up the façade of the building.
The building seems to reflect Socrates’ idea of aesthetics - rejecting instant gratification and focusing on its ability to further an idea larger than itself.
Through its design, it became a space by which to experiment with the various tenets of modernism and, ideas of materiality.
