The Interior design for the corporate headquarters of Greenply Industries in the National Capital Region required a mix of open plan office and cabins and meeting rooms for an office capacity of nearly a hundred staff. The site was an open nearly square floor plate of approximately hundred feet by hundred feet, with glazed on three sides. The entrance to main space was from the southern central core of the commercial office building in which the office space was leased out.
The design mandate for the office was to create an exceptional office, unique to the core that used the products produced by the company in the most innovative manner possible. Being the manufacturers of MDF panels, plywood and laminates, there were ample opportunities to use the material manufactured by the company. From a programmatic point of view, there was a need to create primarily an open plan office which provided a varying degree of privacy to the various department heads from the point of view of privacy and high noise levels because of telecommunication noise. The layout of the office is planned in a manner that locates the cabins and the meeting rooms along the periphery of the site and the open plan offices towards the central core of the main office space.
The central open plan office is the most imposing space that anchors the entire office volume. The ceiling of this space is designed as a series of suspended circular disks that are hung below the services at varying heights.
Approximately 20% of these disks are evenly lit LED lamps that provide the general lighting for the main office workspace. The idea of the disks evolved from our desire to represent a forest at eh core of this office as a signifier of the main activity of the company.
The disks were extrapolated from the architectural representation of tree in plan that we use very often. The circular disk lights were designed specifically for this office with the collaboration of the lighting designers. All lighting for this office has been designed specifically for this space with the collaboration of the lighting consultants, particularly in the main conference room and the offices of the senior management.
The crisscross random lights have been embedded within the raw, saw cut ceilings in a manner that they provide even light throughout the office without there being any loss in intensity of the light itself.
The secondary underlying theme of the office has been the use of juxtaposition with materials. The entire office employs a simple logic of consistently using high finish materials with roughly finished materials reflecting the entire process of the manufacture of MDF panels from fibre and other rough natural material.
The common dining area and the toilet facilities surround the services core of the building. For continuity, these areas to carry forward the idea of the circular disks, however in a more playful manner; not on the ceilings, but as mirrors on the main toilet wall that allude to the continuity of the mirror wall beyond the confines of the toilets. Within the cafeteria, the entire food serving area and counters are defined by this motif. And finally within the senior management toilet areas, the circular mirrors merge into a series of circular windows in the shower cubicle which look out on to the city of Gurgaon.
The design of the senior management cabins required them to be highly mechanized and containers of the state of the art audio- visual equipment. All the equipment was contained above the false ceiling, which was made of, saw cut raw disused wood from the factories of the client. This ceiling was juxtaposed with high gloss furniture constructed specially for the client by a renowned furniture manufacturer. The office has maximized the use of recycled, disused wood wherever possible and has used rapidly renewable resources for the choice of carpets. 90 percent of the lights are LED and have thus brought down the power consumption dramatically for the project. Within the main work space too, the general lighting is LED and instead of choosing high levels of lighting throughout the office, task lights have been provided for each of the workstations. This project has included within its ambit a series of design decisions that make for this office to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly than its peers.
As an office, it encompasses a variety of design, technological and material aspects that are often completely varied and contradictory, yet they are brought together to create a harmonious, efficient and environmentally responsible work space.
