Majestic yet Humble

The New Parliament Building, standing opposite the Old Parliament, embodies a modern Indian architectural style, constructed with local sandstone. Its interiors are naturally illuminated through skylights, with additional light reflecting from the verandahs and landscaped courtyards. The interiors are adorned with varied local styles and crafts and highly adorned and articulated features.

The vision of the prime minister was to give this a sense of prudence and spirituality for a timeless character that reflects the soul of the democratic nation.

Parliament of one of the most populated country in the world being a mega structure to be designed and built in extremely short span of time for a large variety of occupants and approval bodies was itself a adaunting task. It was more difficult to convince the qualitative approach over a quantitative approach in design where approval bodies go by the rule book formed on the basis of qualitative design and selection of contractor is based on the lowest financial bid.

High-quality coordinated Effort

The main objective of lighting design of the new parliament building were to reduce light pollution by avoiding uplights and using masking accent lights; bring vitality and save energy by providing options for light scenes; highlight Indian character by locally crafted custom lights. The lighting solution evokes a sense of purity, harmony, balance, transparency, equality and dynamism of the country. Given that the building is funded by public money and will be maintained by public service departments, careful consideration was essential in the lighting design and fixture selection. On one side design aspects were taken care by convincing architects and interior designers to go for a discreet integrated lighting approach to make lighting special and celebrate the space and on the other side government engineers were educated and convinced on technical aspects of energy efficiency, high quality color rendering, health and productivity aspects within the framework of local green building and international WELL standards for congregation, debate and productivity in a healthy and pleasant manner.

A bespoke design approach

We chose think global act local design philosophy for the building. Sustainable lighting principals like daylight harvesting, vertical illuminance and accent lights for contrast, way finding and lighting automation were used and executed with local materials and craftsmanship. The lighting design celebrates architectural details and articulations of spatial volumes, crafted ceilings, screens, wall decorations and varied material and finishes. With a close co-ordination with architect and interior designer and MEP service consultants and engineers most of the lights are discreetly integrated into built environment. To uses the technology economically and mindfully, all areas were lit with 4000K neutral white and only areas that do not receive natural light were lit with tunable or variable white. Bespoke luminaires designed with long lasting local materials can be seen in majority of the public areas to provide a distinct identity and uniform task light limited to task areas maintains equality among the members of the parliament.

In the end the project demonstrates our skills to manage large scale institutional projects in record time and meticulous planning to achieve complex design goals and demonstrate exemplary design.