This workspace for a finance company is located in a high-rise office suite and commands towering views over the surrounding cityscape in Lower Parel – a precinct which houses the disused textile mills that made Mumbai prosper.

The interior architecture takes its cues both in formal expression and materiality from this industrial landscape. This begins at the entrance where one is greeted with a saw-toothed roof profile in oriented strand board that forms the back of the meeting room and looks like it was lifted straight off of the facade of a mill with a north light roof so typical of the region. The gently swooping reception desk and waiting bench form a softer counterpoint to this in the foreground. The roof over the meeting room flips direction as it travels the length of the room, with the sawtooth profile eventually facing the opposite way. Viewed from within, this twisting roof alternates triangular glazing with backlit stretched fabric providing a gentle lighting in the meeting room.

Preserving both the generous ceiling height of 13’6” and the mechanized aesthetic, we decided to eschew false ceilings in favour of exposing structural members and painting white the profiled metal deck and I-beams above. This intent is carried across the design of the custom lighting for the workstations, where metal pipes bend across space, carrying circular LED profiles within them to provide direct light down onto the desks and also upward to indirectly light the space through reflected light off the structural deck above.   The vinyl flooring and the exposed HVAC ducting are expressed in tones of teal, with plants throughout the space.

The office has large windows to the north, along which three director cabins are arranged. These too follow the same formal expression of roofs, but with a staggered plan. Custom fabricated in slim steel frames and glass to allow maximum daylight into the rest of the office, while textured glass at the eye level maintains privacy for those within.  Mirrored paneling below the metal deck tricks the mind into seeing the glass ceiling as continuing over the entire cabin, while the glass actually stops at the mirror and the full structural height is maintained within.

The custom designed workstations feature are nestled between cork pinboards at one end and integrated screens in metal mesh connected to planter boxes below at the other end, from where creepers grow upward to provide more greenery and visual privacy at seated eye level.

Despite its location in a contemporary office tower, the design of this small office space pays homage to a precinct, and particularly to a type of building that was once the beating heart of the city.

Design Team: Pravir Sethi, Antheia Crasto