The brief called for the creation of a purpose built premium, 200-roomed business hotel offering an optimal environment for networking opportunities among the top IT companies within the International Tech Park at Whitefield, Bangalore (ITPB). TAJ Hotels engaged WOW Architects + Warner Wong Design to design the flagship of their new brand Vivanta whose response was a unique combination of contemporary space and high-end technology set within a strong landscape paradigm.

Whitefield is a rapidly developing suburb of Bangalore where many IT related companies were and still are building corporate offices, residential precincts and related amenities, and it is one of the first successful working models of work and play environments in India.

This naturally made the new hotel a gateway statement between the IT Park and the developing city around it.

“The client’s brief inspired our team to question and push the boundaries of hotel design, not just to address the needs of the discerning business traveler coming to Whitefield, but to also redefine and intensify the hotel as a social and contemporary cultural hub for both the IT Park and IT-based population in Whitefield,” says Wong Chiu Man, principal of WOW Architects + Warner Wong Design.

Located at the entrance of the ITPB, Vivanta serves as a contemporary socio-cultural hub for the local IT community. The architects were confronted with constraints of low height restrictions and high site coverage which demanded creative, adaptive solutions, from which emerged this landscraper concept.

To maximise the high site coverage, the ground ‘plane’ of the site was manipulated conceptually into a Möbius strip (a three-dimensional manifestation of a two-dimensional space that equates to infinity) that would constitute the podium of the hotel. This twisting and folding action of the strip extended the perception of space within the limited area blurring the distinction between building and ground, architecture and landscape.

“By introducing landscape back to the folded ground ‘plane’, the idea of a landscraper (as opposed to skyscraper) building was formed,” says Wong. “The podium then seemed to dematerialise, blurring the distinction between building and ground, architecture and landscape.”

The hotel’s three-storey room block extrudes itself from this ground plane, hovers above it and flexes its way around the site, lifting its way mid-air to contain 200 rooms within its form. These are the key features of the project.

As a result, public and private spaces flow and connect to each other in an endless promenade of spatial experiences with cinematic qualities that are quite unique to its context in this part of the world, drawing references to traditional Indian dance forms of twisting and circling.

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