VIVANTA BY TAJ | WOW Architects | Warner Wong Design

Economically buttressed by its proximity and connectivity to the national capital of New Delhi, the city of Gurgaon, India has enjoyed rapid development into a successful IT hub which has become home to many multinational companies. However, in a familiar narrative to many developing countries, this sudden economic growth and the accompanying urbanization has created a world of radical juxtapositions where pristine contemporary architecture coexists with overt poverty, a lack of infrastructure and an inhospitable physical environment.  The challenge of the design of this Vivanta business hotel was to resonate with the Indian culture by referencing the collective memory of traditional spatial experience while also creating a tectonic language that could stand up to the contradictions of the environment of the site.

In response to its chaotic surroundings, the design physically replicates the transition into a place of beauty and repose through the process of layering.  The physical language of the building’s elevation is a direct manifestation of this concept of layering with its stratified banding of granite, aluminum and glass on the facade.   Its clean and minimal expression is meant to negotiate directly with harsh physical context.  Similarly, the internal spaces are organized in layers designed to shield and insulate the guests.  Notions of Indian palace architecture are modernized and woven into the sequence of spaces of the hotel so that the design bears a strong rootedness to its context and history.  A characteristically Indian sense of grandeur, axiality, and ceremony is translated into the design as well as a spatial sequencing that brings the guest through halls, gardens and courtyards with a carefully framed series of visual axes and perspectives.

The ceremonial entry into the hotel originates at the drop off area that is lined with a procession of granite water feature elements which are echoed on the opposite side by lofty vertical glass fin supports for the triple height entrance lobby.  In a modern play on the traditional axial planning of Indian architecture, here the axis is shifted by the entrance which is deliberately offset to the right of the front façade of the otherwise symmetrical lobby space. The majestic lobby beyond is a clean and bright room with massive white Statuario marble slabs adorning the floor and walls to the left and right of the room.  The monolithic floor, walls and ceiling form an immense portal that overlooks views through a transparent wall of frameless glass to a central courtyard garden with potted frangipani trees that project out of a water feature with a grooved pattern of grey granite.  Across the courtyard, the lobby is visually connected to the all day dining and restaurants on the second storey above as the spaces progress from public to the more private areas of the hotel.  In another deliberate shifting of the axis, a glass encased portal-like corridor carries the guest over the water feature and across to the various hotel facilities.  The sequenced progression of layered indoor and outdoor spaces leads up to the more serene environment of the open pool deck that straddles the front and rear block of the hotel and overlooks views of the developing city beyond.