Lobby and main entrance

VIVANTA by Taj Hotels

I N T E R N AT I O N A L T E C H PA R K , B A N GA LO R E

Warner Wong Design | WOW Architects

3O Hill Street O1- 04 Singapore 17936O
www.wowarchitects.com t 65 6333 3312 e info@wowarchitects.com
 Operational Objectives
The brief calls for the creation of a purpose built 5 star business hotel offering an optimal environment for
networking opportunities among top IT companies within the International Tech Park, Bangalore. The response
is a unique combination of contemporary space design and high-end technology set within landscaped grounds.
The scheme comprises of a three story block that weaves itself from the ground and flexes its way mid-air to
contain the rooms and spaces within its form. This landscraper allows green to flow to the roof of the building,
blurring the distinction between where the building starts and where the ground ends. The hotel at once
combines the conveniences and practical needs of the business traveller with a hip and cool factor that every
young and young at heart business traveller aspires towards.

The design of hotel is the venue that is vibrant, and exciting.

The green park-life environment that will not only facilitate its
function as a business hotel, but also encourage social interaction
and exchange on a myriad of levels.
The rooms function well for the working professional, but are yet
comfortable, spacious and homely.
The public areas provide welcome relief from the hectic working
environment and dense city life.
The food and beverage offerings are tasty and fun, but yet
unintimidating.
The Spa and wellness areas provide a retreat and regeneration zone
for the tired business person.
The landscape becomes an integral part of the hotel experience.

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Lobby and main entrance Design Challenges
The surrounding context of the site is largely underdeveloped with no prospect of street life or urban repose.
The neighboring developments are designed so that they are disconnected from one another creating
a social fortress. There is no existing town center or focal point in which the tech parks occupants can
converge to interact and exchange ideas in a more informal setting. Downtown is at least 45 minutes away
leaving the precinct somewhat lifeless after working hours. With these factors in mind the successful design
response of the hotel has to produce an environment that positions itself as a hub within the tech park , as
well as an activity hub for the Whitefield area.

Low building height restrictions result in the need for high site coverage which reduces open areas for
gardens, swimming pools and spaces for outdoor activity. The strategy was then to float the hotel block
above the ground level, thus creating available space underneath for all hotel amenities.

From the moment the guests arrive at the port-cochere, the experience of the landscraper begins. The lobby
itself is a garden room. It is also the nexus and confluence of several space streams. Space flows from the
lobby in several directions. It flows through to the courtyard beyond and steps up to the upper terrace of the
Indian restaurant, before flowing upwards to the roof terrace of the banquet hall and the open air Moroccan
style Bar and Grill. The lobby also flows through to the banquet pre-function hall and the all day dining. It
flows through a portal to the pool deck. It also flows through the lift lobby to the Spa and Gym.
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Swimming pool/gym/hotel block Proposed Design Concept
Our brief was to develop a new generation business hotel, one that combines the needs of the business
traveller and the little luxuries that makes a home away from home a vibrant and exciting place to be.
The Vivanta by Taj in the internationally famous ITPL Tech Park Bangalore is the first product by Taj and
WOW Architects | Warner Wong Design, and locally executed by Spazzio Design Architecture, India that
addresses this emerging market segment. It is a hotel that breaks the mould of the traditional hotel in
several exciting ways.

This scheme proposes a three story block that extrudes itself from the ground and flexes its way mid-
air to contain 200 rooms within its form. This podium construct acts like a landscraper (the opposite to
skyscraper), a highly sculpted ground hugging structure that allows green to flow up to the roof of the
building blurring the distinction between where the building starts and where the ground ends. Hence, by
the two simple maneuvers of slicing and folding of the ground plane, the limited open space prescribed by
the high site coverage is expanded in perception and the podium dematerialized.

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Woven forms Landscraper
The landscraper structural typography then becomes containers of the various hotel public activities and
functions, providing the users with a seamless journey between one space to the next. The landscraper structure
behaves like Malleable linear volumetric strips which are able to embody the characteristics of the ground by
replacing the greenery it has displaced. In order to emphatically express the landform design approach, cast
insitu concrete was selected as the major construction material and left exposed where ever possible. Figurative
incisions in the concrete served to express the dynamic flowing nature of the design and helped smooth out the
construction joints of the panels.

Design Advancement:
By using nature, topography and context as a design primer instead of adopting building precedents, the hotel
sets out to achieve an altogether new direction to how a business hotel can be approached and experienced.

Social Advancement:
Visual interaction and openness is encouraged by achieving transparency through strategic use of voids at
different levels of the building. Public spaces flow all the way to the roof garden level where functions and events
can take place.

Technical advancement:
Use of a light-weight roof garden construction in conjunction with green walls (vertical planting) are designed to
create the landscraper experience.
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Lobby and main entrance Icon
The manipulation of the ground plane to encapsulate the hotel public spaces is derived from the idea of
the contextual site soil becoming the program, becoming the architecture and eventually becoming the
experience of the user. This concept is in response to the clients aspirations for a business hotel that reflects
the companys innovative entrepreneurial spirit whilst creating a social hub for the tech park round the
clock.

Because we wanted to work with the skill level of the local construction industry, and because we felt a
RAW look would be appropriate for the concept, we accepted imperfection as a virtue. Thus, defects in the
workmanship was embraced as a positive part of the aesthetic, and a strong bush hammer finish was used
to even out the texture of the exposed concrete.

In areas where concrete was not appropriate, simple rough plaster, stone or wood panelling is used. At all
times, we keep the material palette for exterior and interior sympathetic to each other, so as to blur the
distinction between architecture and landscape.

Floor, walls and ceilings blended and folded into each other. This material response heightens the awareness
of the basic landscraper concept.

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Lounge and Bar Lounging
Entertainment is a vital factor in the successful positioning of the new hotel. Thus, we envisaged the roof top
bar and grill playing a key role in attracting local clientele as well as entertaining in house guests.
It is based on an Indian garden pavilion theme, and taking avantage of Bangalores good climate, natural
ventilation is used, and great unobstructed views of the surrounding tech park and the hotels sloping garden
roof can be enjoyed by the guests.

The access is through a series of dramatic vertical accents. Either from the lobby along the main grand stair
promenade, up from the pool along the main sloping roof garden, or an intimate passage from the patio of the
Indian Restaurant.

The journey is then rewarded by arriving into a cosy lounge that is a series of tented seating platforms around a
reflecting pool. An indoor disco/live music area for higher volume partying and merry making.

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Specialty Restaurant Perspective Specialty Cuisine
The Indian Restaurant is based on the cuisine of the Indias North West. There is a strong emphasis on bread,
meats and Grilled Vegetables. In order to take advantage of the mild weather of Bangalore, the design layout
is a dining room with an open plan kitchen and a large dining patio. The entire kitchen is a backdrop to the
restaurant where the bread oven, tandoor and grill become show case elements for the guests. Material patterns
of the floor wraps up the floor and ceiling of the restaurant that provide a seamless transition between an
indoor-outdoor space.

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Lobby entrance and ramp view All Day Dining Dynamism
This restaurant is the main dining area and is located close to the lobby and the nexus of activity and flows
of the hotel. It is a tall dynamic space that looks and is connected to several courtyards, gardens, terraces
and the main pool deck.

The ceiling of the dining room is a dynamic energy field; a rippling and waving surface that interacts with
the action stations and dinners below. The buffet is a series of Pan Asian food action stations that offer tasty
samplings wrapped in an architectural opera. The floor, walls and ceilings seem to flow into each other.
There is a large screen TV that hovers above and promises interesting media offerings on a regular basis.

A wide stairway promenade containing the front of house facilities wraps around the podium in an
interlocking manner to engage the green rooftop, stemming from the dining area.

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 Lobbyconstruction
Under and main entrance
photo of sloping grass Spatial Flex
promedage
The grass promenade behaves like a boulevard housing street-side cafes, boutiques, bars, restaurants, and
gyms offering all the excitement and festivity of an urban boulevard. The proposal is a flexible and efficient
commercial space having the ability for the programmed facilities to overlap each other, and the ability to
expand or interchange according to demand and situation.

From a distance, the hotel mass looks like a medley of green and blue patterns. This is because the room
facade is conceived from a digital picture of the site taken prior to construction. The image was pixelated
and recomposed in the memory of the site.

When seen from the park, the building mass looks like a smooth transition of greens to blues, blending with
the trees and sky. The overall effect is soothing from outside and inside as well, where from the experience
of the individual rooms, no single view is ever the same. The flowing shape ensures that each room has a
distinctive view of the green roof-scape and pool views, and the pattern of the facade ensures that every
room has a different mood lighting that filters in as well.

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East Elevation Concept Memory Creation
The distinct elevation of the hotel block is created by digitizing a landscape image of the site and applying
different shades of glass that matches the pixels of that image as a memory of the site.

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 Viewpoint
The words of theorist Guy Debords analysis in his book The Society of the Spectacle relating to
environmental planning and urbanism became pertinent
in the design process:

The same history that threatens this twilight world is capable of subjecting space to a directly experienced
timethat critique of human geography whereby individuals and communities must construct places and
events commensurate with the appropriation, no longer just of their labor, but of their total history. By
virtue of the resulting mobile space of play, and by virtue of freely chosen variations in the rules of the game,
the independence of places will be rediscovered without any new exclusive tie to the soil, and thus too the
authentic journey will be restored to us, along with authentic life understood as a journey containing its
whole meaning within itself.

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Hotel
LobbyRoom Perspectives
and main entrance Accomodate
Emphasis in spatial crafting particularly reflects the thoughts projected by Debords
critique in the landscrapers ability to firstly displace and then recreate the
characteristics of the original site.

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Hotel Room Perspectives Stay

The interiors have been designed with the knowledge of specific function and purpose it needs to deliver in order
for the user to have an authentic experience.

The room concept is that of an urban studio loft. It was conceived of as one open plan space, within which 28m2
is zoned into bedroom study croner, relaxation corner, naturally lighted shower, walk-in-wardrobe and bathroom
and glass enlcosed wc. The appliances and conveniences of TV, minibar, magazine rack, AV systems are all built
into the walls.

The rooms carry a light and lifted ambience by way of fit and finish, stemming from the loft concept. Clever space
conservation and an openess that is created by natural light reinforces this concept.

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Architects Statement
We began the entire design process by
understanding the cultural, economic and geo-
climatic context of the Bangalore area.
Because of the low mass dictated by the urban
design guidelines, and because of the mild climate
of Bangalore, we decided upon a strong landscape
strategy as the concept driver. Taj readily supported
our desire to design the architecture, interiors and
landscape as one integrated experience.
In order to tap into the mindset and profile of the
expected client base, the hotel was to deliberately
zestful in spirit and dynamic in design. To express
the borderless potential of the new generation, the
building itself was formed by a simple conceptual
twist and fold of the ground plane to create
a conceptual endless promenade of spatial
experiences.
WOW Architects
3O Hill Street O1- 04 Singapore 17936O
www.wowarchitects.com t 65 6333 3312 e info@wowarchitects.com
The form design is conceived from the figure of 8
mobius strip, a 3 dimensional twisted loop that has a
2 dimensional continuous flowing surface. The hotel
is thus conceived of as a land-scraper, the ideal form
and space that unifies and blends the building with
the earth, and becomes essentially an experientially
rich hospitality space. Public and Private spaces flow
and connect to each other and there is a cinematic
treatment of the spaces and places in the hotel.
We envisage that this strong sense of flow will result
in increased guest movements, and as a result, more
interaction, and this will be a benefit for the expected
young and trendy clientele for the hotel.
Wong Chiu Man
Director, Warner Wong Design