Leharyia | OBR Open Building Research

The project is a high-end commercial cluster located close to the Jaipur International Airport. The cluster includes four buildings of the same height (30m) and different dimensions covering approximately 45,000sqm of total built-up area. The buildings are laid out like a system of parallel fingers oriented North – South and characterized by a distinctive design which enhances the elegant atmosphere of a very urban business center with panoramic views of the surrounding landscape.

Each building is provided with its own drop-off area and entrance lobby directly connected to the car park in the basements. The disposition of these elements is instrumental in slightly reorienting the office spaces in the buildings, opening them towards the view of the landscape. The tops of the building feature roof gardens with panoramic terraces.

The ground floor is predominantly designed to be leasable to retail establishments with restaurants and cafes facing the inner gardens. The upper floors are designed as extremely flexible, open-plan offices for lease/sale. Approximately 4,000 sqm on the upper floors of two of the blocks are earmarked for KGK corporate offices

and a guest house.

The architectural concept is based on a composition of eight vertical screens encasing the buildings with an alternation of solids and voids. The screens extend beyond the buildings, creating a striking overlapping effect of progressive transparency when seen from the street, while at the same time addressing the specific climatic conditions of Jaipur

by functioning like vertical canopies

that shade the buildings.

The façade design is inspired by textile traditions of India that are more than 3000 years old. It uses the structural patterning of textiles as well as its crafted motifs. The screens - just like fabric - are created by a structural system of tana (warp) and bana (weft), composing a system of horizontal ceramic baguettes woven onto vertical metal bars, so as to appear as a macro textile.

The design of the façade is achieved by morphing the traditional pattern of Lehariya with parametric modeling incorporating climatic and other complex programmatic requirements,

to achieve the contextuality of the building.

The chromatic palette is graded from warm to cold colors (i.e. from red to indigo), characterizing each screen differently. In this way each building, court and garden acquires a different identity and thus serves to reinforce the sense of belonging of the inhabitants and promotes a sense of community and the individuality of the final user.

The screens forming the facades are further established as the most valuable part of the design by serving as a medium to re-connect contemporary architecture to the traditional

art & craft of Jaipur.

This design ideology embodies the intent for social-cultural sustainability of the project: the ceramic baguettes, hand-made by local craft producers, broaden the meaning of “multiplicity”, where repetition (handmade) is not mere multiplication (industrial), but a way to demonstrate the magnificence of local materials and iconography, their adaptability to modern design sensibility.

Growing from the small scale of arts & craft to the larger scale of architecture, the intrinsic variation in these hand-made products becomes evident, without altering but, instead, enhancing the (parametric) façade design process as well as the life of the people involved in the building process.

Thanks to its ethos of environmental-cultural-social sustainability, the project creates a foundation for a new vision of urban development in Jaipur linking private and public, modernity and history. The cluster thus becomes a pilot project for a more conscious real estate process, capable of combining global economic requirements with Indian culture and more specifically Jaipur’s local traditions.