The Stratum

Venus Stratum is a 21-storey commercial building with offices and retail areas; located in the rapidly growing western part of the Ahmedabad city in Western India. Client’s aspiration was to make this a state-of-the-art project for the city. The building looks like one big cube which gets divided into three slices with a service floor and a skip floor. The north and south facades were to have some special treatment. Our idea was to make the exterior more participatory like a magnet of urbanity. While the interior needed to be cozier and livelier. As it is a nicely crafted building, from early on we had decided to hide the luminaires as much as we can and let the materials and building speak primarily. Decorative lights are only used where there is a need to unify a particular space; Be it is a group retail area or the atrium. Lighting concept for the façade was changed from concept architect’s direct view vertical lights to concealed horizontal lights which help to express strata/layers formed by the folded plate façade. We made these lights controllable for the sustainability and communication reasons. All lights per window are programmable and we have developed artistic content for it which is inspired by the movement around the building. Such as movement of the sun and how it created playful light shadow and reflection on the façade or moving traffic and their lights or the transactions happening in retail area by scanning the barcodes or just a changing time in form of digital clock. The lighting media façade expresses it all in an artistic low resolution video content installation. It can allow owners occasionally convey textual greeting messages to the city as well.

Atrium as Living Room

The entrance lobby and atrium at the podium level were covered in the interior lighting scope. One of the major value additions we could do is to provide one of the tallest illuminated portal to the atrium which becomes a nice architectural element in the façade and the atrium both. South façade of the atrium has trussed and sun breakers which are also discreetly highlighted. The atrium roof is illuminated to give a perception of height in the atrium. Along the length of the atrium, you will find the decorative luminous dandelions in the planters which hide the ventilation grills. There are custom rhythmic multi spotlight columns with allow for accent light in the space.

In general, the project shows a remarkable finish and coordinated effort with architecture, interior, landscape and facade engineering teams to show a refined product.

Clever use of building automaiton, location of fittings in right place and unique portal design not only saves energy but also provides a vitality to the façade and opportunity to communicate at an urban level.

In general, the overall building shows a well-coordinated effort to bring the best of all designers and services and is a beautiful example of a well-articulated final product. Our dynamic façade with flying pixels is just an icing on the cake!