At the Mahalaxmi Racecourse in Mumbai, under a canopy of tall rain trees, is tote on the turf, a bar and lounge which has won a prestigious international design prize.
Tote on the Turf, the new hangout of Mumbai’s glitterati, has added another feather to its hat. The brainchild of Malini and Rahul Akerkar of deGustibus Hospitality (which runs Indigo, the popular fine-diner in Colaba), Tote has bagged the Best Bar Design award at the prestigious Restaurant & Bar Design Awards held recently in London — a significant feat since Tote outshone 500 bars from around the world to win the award.
The imaginative, site-sensitive design is the handiwork of Kapil Gupta and Chris Lee of Serie Architects, who re-cast Mumbai’s two-century-old Royal Western India Turf Club as a restaurant, bar and banquet space. Sprawling over 24,000 sq ft, Tote is located at the Mahalaxmi Race Course, at the building where bets on the races were calculated. The name Tote refers to the board (the “totalisator”) that punters consult before placing their bets.
Tote opened to the public in September last year, but took four years to design and execute. “The brief was simple,” Malini Akerkar explains. “It was to accommodate the new design within the older heritage buildings at the Race Course, which go back to the city’s colonial past, and convert them into a series of restaurant and bars.” The strict heritage conservation guidelines demanded that the roof profile of three-quarters of the buildings be preserved.
Gupta and Lee, much sought after for their award-winning, quirky designs, had their own ideas when they first visited the run-down building. “We figured that the project had to maintain the shell of the older pavilions,” says Gupta, “while fashioning a new interior that pleased the clients.”
So Tote maintains its colonial frontage — but pass through the doors and you will find yourself in a veritable forest. “This place has a lush canopy of 100-year-old rain trees,” Gupta says. “So we thought of creating an architectural interpretation of the trees as our base design. Thus began the lengthy process of translating the outside foliage into intricately cut wooden panels in white downstairs, and dark chocolate at the bar.” There are even ‘branches’ in steel on the ceiling: strategically placed skylights in abstract shapes that mimic the effect of sunlight breaking through foliage. “He [Gupta] wanted to play out the light effects just as they would through a tree,” explains Malini Akerkar.
But what takes the cake is the 40-ft-long bar, embellished with dark chocolate-coloured wooden panelling that creates the effect of a folded origami flower or a kaleidoscope. The result is grand, especially the intricate detailing of the panelling on the interiors of the lounge bar on the upper level. This was, to quote Gupta, their interpretation of a “textured tree bark with intersecting branches”. Two wrought iron mezzanine floors suspended from the ceiling provide a seating area from which to watch the goings-on at the standing-room-only bar below.
Akerkar, who was closely associated with Tote’s design and construction, made sure the architects kept acoustics in mind while finishing the bar’s design. So the three-dimensional walnut-veneer plywood acoustic panelling (set in bronze channels) of the lounge area helps to enhance sound. Move to the restaurant at the ground level, and Akerkar serves up meals that gain flavour from the wood-burning ovens and grills of the open-plan kitchen.
That the out-of-the-box design has gone down very well with the elite Mumbai crowd is evident from the fact that since September, when the restaurant opened, Serie Architects has been flooded with offers. But Gupta claims they are being very selective about the projects they take up. Serie, which has offices in London and Beijing as well, and has won several design awards, is now designing a middle-income housing complex comprising 440 apartment units in Slovakia, and converting a large, unused factory to a city centre in Hangzhou, China.
