Brookfield Properties creating a work destination, inspired by history and designed for the future

Noida, Uttar Pradesh [India]: Workspaces constitute 70% of a working individual’s day and subsequently is directly related to their well-being. Therefore, we must rethink and redefine our design ideologies that shape the workspaces of tomorrow. Incorporating local architectural language into buildings has fostered a sense of belonging, enhanced comfort in the built environment and encouraged community building. As most organisations strive to create landmark architecture, this has made it essential for global institutions and organisations to contextualise the built environment as they develop campuses worldwide. For instance, the recent Taj Mahal inspired office built by Microsoft in Noida has set the precedence for this very ideology.

As most workforces now prepare themselves to return to the office, Noida’s biggest and finest workspace, Candor TechSpace Sector 135, will soon have a new addition to its expansive campus that creates a distinctive landmark. “Candor TechSpace’s Tower 11 brings workspaces that abide by international standards while celebrating, utilising and contemporising historical and architectural design knowledge. Tower 11 will create a work destination that blurs the line between a workspace and a place of wellbeing and community with enhanced productivity and creativity,” shares Alok Aggarwal, Managing Director and CEO, Brookfield Properties. The design for tower 11 draws spatial understanding and syntax from local architecture and embedded space making techniques from multiple monuments such as the India Gate and the Taj Mahal to create a contemporary and future-ready office building. The new addition will offer workspaces that revolutionise and redefine how we perceive our work environments.

Contemporising materiality that is rooted in tradition.

The Tower 11 executive entrance façade.

An amalgamation of brass and black mirror details to exuberate regality and monumentality.

Tower 11 is an amalgamation of symbolic as well as physical derivations of regional architecture that are contemporised for functional efficiency and maximum performance. For instance, the form of the building is inspired by the volumetric characteristics of the India Gate. The two-building volumes have been articulated as two distinct elements united by a core and a striking façade in the central axis. The facade recreates a contemporary adaptation of the triumphant arch of the India Gate, that embraces with regality and through its form recreates the opulent yet welcoming aesthetic. On the one hand, detailed in dark glass panels and brass, the facade with its regal tonality recreates a sturdiness like the carved stones of India Gate as the rays of the sun reflect off it. On the other hand, the high-performance facade maximises pleasant daylight ingress with minimal heat gain and glare control to create comfortable indoor environments.

Though the tower acts as a climax to the axial Candor campus, it also marks the entry into an elegant yet opulent built environment. Inspired by the Taj Mahal’s ethos, the entrance lobby is a three-storied volume, with white marble walls that offer monumentality and grandeur to every visitor. Well-Designed and optimised, expansive floor plates with minimised space wastage create seamless, functional, and efficient spaces. The frequent use of marble to create textured walls along with recessed light fitting details make the interiors a contemporary manifestation of the Taj Mahal, while creating a clean and spotless interior finish.

The building design focuses on crafting experiences and maximum efficiency, with expansive green landscapes, a workspace that creates an experience like no other. Describing the same, architect Ricardo Bofill, Principal Chief Architect for Tower 11, shares, “Orientation through the building is always straightforward with no dark corners, no notches and no wasted corridors. The office space is well lit naturally, with great views. The ground floor is a mix of marble lobbies in elegant white shades and overlooks a black mirror reflective water feature, with a lush garden all around. This creates a freshly-ventilated interior space with a perspective towards the campus, providing a place-making experience rarely seen before in an office building.”

Building Monumentality.

The black mirror reflective water body and Tower 11.

The black mirror water body at the heart of the campus and the very entrance of Tower 11 creates a serene and soothing campus ethos.

“We wanted to imbibe the quality of placemaking that historical public buildings offer, and therefore, the campus planning draws inspiration and learning from ancient planning techniques of the iconic Taj Mahal”, shares Alok Aggarwal, Managing Director and CEO, Brookfield Properties. Amalgamating tradition with modernity, with Tower 11 as the central focus, the axial planning adds monumentality and regality. The black glass reflection water body located in the foreground surrounded by lush greens modernises the ancient planning and cooling techniques while employing placemaking tools to generate a stimulating environment. The focus on linearity in shared spaces creates a sense of cohesive continuity with segregated vehicular and pedestrian circulation to define public areas. The water body also becomes the central pause point, cushioned by the surrounding landscape, and housed within the pedestrian thoroughfare.

The campus is equipped with amenities, ranging from curated retail, fitness centres, food courts and food outlets, coffee shops, banking facilities, creche facilities, all of which are distributed within the 30,000 sq. ft. amenities block. The design focus for the public areas is not to landscape or hardscape, but people-scape to curate experiences that stimulate and excite the end-user. “Under the shadows of the frangipani trees and transported by the fragrance of tropical flowers, we are hoping to create a new place, a new destination for each end-user to write his or her own story”, shares Ricardo. The ecology focuses on pedestrian mobility, the air, and the sounds that create a built environment that can inspire the end-user and open the mind to a depth of experiences.

The campus offering   4.5 M Sf of leasable area is designed with modern sensibilities to remain committed to the health and environment of the building occupants and the communities within which it operates, generating a larger positive impact. Drawing from most historical architecture that is environment-friendly, the campus is ecologically conscious with new-age technology and historical planning techniques to create a microclimate. With distributed green landscapes, waste management systems, water management and recycling, energy efficiency, reduced use of fossil fuels, health and well-being of its occupants and more, the building has been awarded a Platinum rating by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC). To ensure that the best quality environments are provided to the users, the campus also incorporates air purifiers, mainly electrostatic filters with EC fans for purified air quality, that provide ideal AQI levels to all inhabitants.

A power-packed Workspace solution

The Candor TechSpace campus offers an unparalleled connectivity advantage as it is directly connected to the metro station as well as flaunts direct access to the 12 lanes signal free expressway. Subsequently, the campus is well connected to the Noida CBD, Ghaziabad as well as East Delhi. To foster a holistic living experience, the campus is located within an integrated township with proximity to residential and social infrastructure.

Tower 11 at the Candor TechSpace, Sector 135 is a workspace solution that keeps the users and inhabitants as the highest priority through design. It is an integrated workspace destination that amalgamates innovation with historical design knowledge to create a building that is a notch above its contemporaries. “Through Tower 11, we reimagined how workspaces are conceived and can push the limits of design to achieve a better work-life balance and experience, better infrastructure, better healthcare, better sustainability initiatives, better wellbeing initiatives for our occupants and subsequently a campus beyond the workplace. We aim to create a work destination,” shares Alok Aggarwal, Managing Director and CEO, Brookfield Properties.

Candor TechSpace, Sector 135, Noida

An integrated campus ecosystem offering commercial real estate solution that reimagines workspaces.

Candor TechSpace, Sector 135, Noida: Walk through video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlFg1SshQ2M&t=10s