A residential project makes news at World Architecture Festival.
India’s nomination this year at the World Architecture Festival at Barcelona for the People’s Choice Award is a residential project that’s set to change Kolkata’s ‘atmosphere’.
Christened ‘Atmosphere’, Forum Projects’ first attempt at residential real estate is drawing maximum votes because of its key attraction — an amorphous cloud suspended between two towers, 400 feet above the ground. It’s a mix of a Japanese garden and the Mobius — an infinite loop-like sculpture suspended in the sky and spread across 55,000 square feet. The structure called ‘Deya’, which means cloud, is inspired by Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate and accounts for 18 per cent of the cost of the Rs 550-crore project that’s coming up on a three-acre stretch on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass Road.
The skin of the Deya, mostly an open air structure, is made up of expanded mesh panels wrapped around structural ribs and special panels carrying shimmering mobile reflective disks scattered across the mesh to create a silver lining in the sky. The porosity of these materials enables Deya to appear different in form depending on the weather. Deya will house a club with swimming pools, an infinite jogging track, squash courts, a golf putting green and a basketball court. It will also include a mini cinema, an open-air party deck, an amphitheatre, and multiple lounges. The Singapore-based architects for the project, Khoo Peng Beng and Belinda Huang, had won last year’s World Architecture Award. The multi-layered suspension has been engineered by Dr Hossein Rezai-Jorabi.
Of the 80 apartments in Atmosphere’s residential towers — 32 duplex and 48 single-floor — 21 have been sold since the last week of August. Each unit is spread between 6,000 sq ft and 8,500 sq ft and has an 800 sq ft garden bed. The project has set a benchmark for realty prices. Forum Projects Managing Director Rahul Saraf has recently sealed a Rs 20-crore deal at the rate of Rs 23,529 per sq ft — the costliest transaction in the City of Joy.
The developer will manage Deya for the next three years; it will then be handed over to the building society with a sink-in fund of Rs 35 crore, thus relieving the residents of maintenance cost. To showcase the project, Saraf has built a gallery for Rs 10 crore, again a first in India. But it’s money well spent. Saraf expects a 20 per cent average rate of return, but if industry experts are to be believed, the project will give an average return of Rs 1,200 crore. Keen to keep investors out, Forum Projects has approached the city’s industrialists and businessmen to buy property here. Work on the site started two months ago and the project is scheduled to be ready by July 2014. Residents are expected to move in by November that year.
“This project is iconic. Its architecture is one of its kind,” says Mayank Saxena, managing director, Kolkata, Jones Lang LaSalle. “The rates in Alipore and Ballygunge, the posh localities of Kolkata, are Rs 16,000-18,000 per sq ft. At Rs 20,000 sq ft, this project is the first entrant in the segment. But if everyone starts repeating this model, then holding prices at that level would be difficult,” says a real estate analyst.
For Sara, who had bid 40 per cent higher for the plot, recovering the cost won’t be a problem. At the time of going to press, Atmosphere was at number one position, leading with 5,084 votes for the People’s Choice Award.