A 35-key boutique hotel located in a prominent area in Kolkata en route the airport; ‘The Gallery Hotel’ is designed to be a definitive landmark along a busy arterial road of the city. Standing along the straight and densely bordered road, the building is mainly viewed from a tangential direction rather than from the front. Keeping this in mind and our intention to create a pause in the midst of urban chaos, the façade was envisaged as a striking metallic sculpture.
The elevation of ‘The Gallery Hotel’ was designed to seemingly drape the building with a glittering screen. Swathed in 13,818 shiny metallic gold, silver and black ‘shingles’, the building appears to shimmer as these polished butterfly shaped elements sway gently in the wind. The placement of these shingles was detailed meticulously so as to limit visibility from outside while still enabling light and ventilation to the interiors of the hotel.
The shingles were made of Physical vapor deposition (PVD) coated stainless steel plates bent to a calculated angle to obtain the desired effect. Three different coloured units were placed scrupulously to attain a shaded effect on the façade. These were mounted onto panels made of MS flats which were in turn fixed to a MS support structure.
