
Intelligently designed by Architects Amit Gupta and Britta Knobel Gupta, this is one of thelatest projects by Studio Symbiosis Architects, Noida. The smart facade of Punjab Kesari Headquarter is designed with the capability of reducing heat gain and optimize façade opening ratio, ensuring no artficial lighting is required on a typical day.
USP - Through this façade, a Lux level of 500 is achieved on each floor plate at a workstation height, as well as a daylight factor of two over 80% of the floor plate, ensuring the sustainability of the project.
Punjab Kesari Headquarters is designed as "Fusion" of traditional Indian architecture and contemporary office space, the main objective is to reduce heat gain and optimize façade opening ratio, ensuring no artificial lighting is required on a typical day. An animated façade is designed as an outcome of different façade opening ratio depending on the orientation.
A hexagonal pattern was used as a base and through iterative process various porosity patterns were generated from it to create different light conditions. This resulted in a variable opacity condition in the facade that had a dual purpose of creating performative architecture and also created variable openings on the facade in various orientations generating a design for the facade that is animating and has an inherent meaning.

This resulting pattern morphs from 81% opacity on the north facade to 27% opacity on the south facade, with an intermediate opacity of 54% on East and 62% on west facade respectively.
Project- Punjab Kesri Headquarters, New Delhi
Architect- Studio Symbiosis
Commissioned- 2014
Work Completion- January 2017 (estimated)
Award- Winner Best Office Architecture India 2016-17 by International Property Awards
Contact- 0120-4226979 info@studiosymbiosis.com
The Jali facade is made of Glass Reinforced Concrete panels. In terms of construction tolerances a system has been adopted whereby through CNC milling, a mould will be created for the facade pattern and this mould will be used for casting the facade panels. The curvature of the entrance will be also casted using this process whereby by using digital fabrication of mould a higher accuracy in the design is achieved.

Sustainability is at the epicentre of the project embedded in form of, optimized natural lighting, cross ventilation and reduction of heat gain. The double jali screen reduces the outside air temperature in front of the glass. The colder air is going in and pulled into the atrium through the chimney effect of the atrium space and resulting in natural ventilation and reducing the indoor air temperature naturally so the cooling load for the air conditioning is reduced.
A central atrium connects the various floors creating a diffused boundary condition and a visual porosity between people working on different floors. Since the design looks at no artificial lighting it makes the user feel closer to nature and allow to work in natural lighting. The office floors are dividable into smaller units to achieve flexible units ranging from 500 to 2000sqm.