Bengaluru Airport City
Peekay Steel Castings’ new venture into additive manufacturing is located on a one-acre site at the edge of the newly developing Bengaluru Airport city. It was designed to house many overlapping programs from an experience and design centre for visitors, to office and symposium spaces for employees, and a large production facility with the world’s largest quartz silica 3D printing machine that produces a material to be used in aerospace, healthcare and natural gas industries. Visually, the project needed to underscore the paradigmatic shift for the client, reflecting their foray into new technological and manufacturing frontiers while simultaneously staying familiar to its loyal customers and long-time employees. The design attempts to address this idea through the symbolic articulation of the façade, drawing from the idea of the industrial sheds synonymous with steel factories and foundries.
The physical requirements of the production process determined the layout of this facility. At centre stage, the double-height volume of the shop floor was designed to be universally accessible and visually connected to all the spaces through the volume. The regard for employee wellbeing drove the choice of technology and materiality, along with the climate-responsive strategies to create a future-forward manufacturing space.
The form, influenced by the site’s orientation and climate, resulted in large façade spans, maximising how the building interfaces with the outside and the city. The west and south façades, being the most prominent, were also very susceptible to heat gain and glare and shading them proved to be a design challenge. Fins in pre-weathered zinc panels, configured as self-shading serrated walls, were detailed to allow diffused natural light into the shop floors through the south. The same formal articulation continued over the roof to symbolically and functionally imitate north light trusses often found in processes of industrial production. The standing seam composition with staggered joints further highlighted the language of construction and manufacturing.
Porous fins made of expanded aluminium mesh were installed as a free-standing detached screen to shade the terraces and courtyards along the west. This materiality choreographed dramatic layers of light and shadow over the public and customer-facing area,s creating variable and enjoyable spatial experiences. Moreover, these screens created engaging semi-covered volumes and experiences by juxtaposing the natural light against different textures and greenery in the landscaped courtyards and terraces opening directly into the customer areas and workspaces. Spatially, the design is centred around employee well-being and the visitor experience.
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