Gurgaon Warehouse, Gurgaon, Haryana, India

This complex of warehouses and offices sits on a national highway in Gurgaon, one of India’s high-tech boomtowns. As with other Writer warehouses, maximizing storage area within zoning constraints was a major design concern.  We were asked to develop a compelling wrapper for a very large and flexible “box”.  The facades are composed of angled fins that bring a soft oblique light into the spaces and circular pre-cast concrete glazed tubes that project from the façade and cut heat and glare while bringing light in.  The motifs are a modern interpretation of the North Indian ‘jali’ or decorative screen.

The internal organization of the building is simple; a central loading dock where trailers unload is flanked by storage spaces on either side, thirty to sixty feet in height.   The spaces are filled with a multi-level steel racking system.  Specialty storage areas requiring temperature or humidity control are located in single height spaces above the loading dock area. The construction system is concrete frame with a block infill.  Given the budget, time frame and available building technologies, the building does not rely on fine detailing and finishing.  Instead it attempts to give a robust, tectonic form to a discrete set of ideas.

Completed: 2005
Photographs: Rajat Dilwali/Kinsey Brothers
Project Team: Vrinda Khanna, Robert Schultz
Structural Engineering:  Vakil Mehta Sheth Consultants