It’s hard to miss the Audi showroom on Golf Course Road in Gurgaon. There’s no ignoring the company’s marques, the A4, A6, A8 and Q7, outside, lined up on a ramp on the foyer and aligned to form a curve replicating the German automaker’s famous logo. A smaller car finds its way into this formation and is immediately shooed away by a security guard. A white Audi R8 Spyder with a red hard top — priced at Rs 1.5 crore — is parked at the entrance on a platform specially imported from Germany. A double-shell, rear-ventilated aluminium façade envelopes the rectangular building spread across more than 13,000 square feet which emulates the Terminal Concept Design developed by Audi for its dealers worldwide. The curved walls and the extensive use of glass keep the spotlight firmly on the vehicles. The no-fuss showroom is simple, and sporty, yet efficient.
Spread across 3,500 square feet, the Hermès store in Mumbai is reminiscent of an opulent sitting room. Even the location — the building on 15A Horniman Circle is “point zero” from where all distances in the city are measured — is no coincidence; the brand chose it after great deliberation. Inside, a Parisian rug is embossed with the French brand’s iconic logo. Gleaming teak cabinets showcasing perfumes, silk scarves and equestrian equipment such as riding saddle and crop — Hermès is famous for these — are scattered across the room. A mannequin, dressed in a limited edition Hermès sari, gives the local touch. All pieces of furniture, be it the occasional table or the ornate mirrors, have been sourced from approved vendors across the world. Architects from Rena Dumas Architecture Intérieure, which has done up Hermès stores around the world, meticulously incorporated the signature mosaic floors, a process that took 18 months to complete.
With luxury retail taking firm root in India, designers of upscale commercial spaces find that their services are in great demand. The showroom is the brand’s first point of contact with the customer. So luxury showrooms and spaces in India are designed on the premise that they must emulate their international counterparts to perfection. Take the case of Audi. Before lending its name to a dealership or workshop in any part of the world, the company provides a handbook of design guidelines. “This handbook,” says Romesh Sapra, architect for Audi, “is my Bible.”
In black T-shirt and faded jeans, flaunting a tattoo inscribed on his left arm and his mane of white hair tied in a ponytail, Sapra is also architect for iconic American motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson. Incidentally, his wife Manishi designs the showrooms and workshops for Mercedes-Benz in India.
Sapra highlights six key design points for Audi showrooms — the façade (always in aluminium), the entrance element (the arrangement of cars on the ramp), showroom concept (“sporty yet luxurious”), the Audi “curve”, signage and exterior design. Sapra’s primary task is to focus on the car. Which is why cars in softer colours — white, black, steel grey and silver — are bunched together to maintain homogeneity, while models in brighter reds, oranges and purples stand out in another corner.
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For Mohit Gujral, the architect of DLF Emporio — the luxury mall in New Delhi which houses high-end brands such as Emporio Armani, Louis Vuitton, Harry Winston and Fendi — the most difficult task was to satisfy the stores’ demands of space and ambience. So he collaborated with Hong Kong-based interiors specialist Chandu Chadha to create several sample designs. Gujral also roped in international zoning experts and mall managers to guide him in “interacting with the brands”. He travelled across the world for inspiration: two important stops were the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas and the Guggenheim museum in New York, which, says Gujral “is often criticised for overpowering the art which it houses!” And so everything at the DLF Emporio, from the atrium to the washroom, has been designed in Italian marble and burnished wood, to give it a feel of “comfort” as opposed to “in-your-face luxury”.
Brands such as Canali, Ferragamo and Jimmy Choo follow set design guidelines of colour, display and furniture; the window display might change with the seasons, but not a shelf can be changed without clearance from global headquarters. An Indian architect is brought on board for coordinating with the brand’s international architectural team, but the latter keep visiting the outlets during implementation to give feedback. The store cannot begin operations without approval from headquarters. “Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior were the first two brands that signed up with us [DLF Emporio],” says Gujral — that’s perhaps why they are placed right at the entrance.
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The premium luxury segment is becoming bigger by the year, in terms of the volume of space required — and this has created a demand for architects like Gujral and Sapra. And brands, especially the more iconic international ones, will go to great lengths to ensure that the architect who designs its outlets understands its look and identity, says Sapra who is currently designing the Ferrari workshop in Gurgaon. Sapra has been flown to luxury conferences across the world to receive a “first-hand exposure to world-class facilities”. He has visited Audi dealers in Majorca in Spain, Ingolstadt and Munich in Germany, Australia and China. Ducati invited him to Manchester to visit its flagship showroom. But the “most exhilarating”, says Sapra, was the Harley-Davidson headquarters in Milwaukee in the US.
While designing the Harley-Davidson showroom in Delhi, Atul Aggarwal, the managing director of Capital Harley-Davidson, gave Sapra only one design brief: “conform to the brand’s identity”. Using his experience as an informal member of the “Harley Owners Group” in India — the official Harley-Davidson riding club, popular in the US for its members riding and partying together even as they swap biking tales — Sapra replicated a garage-like atmosphere with the use of metal and the darker shades of red and black.
The devil lies in the details. The lighting, for one, is a gamechanger. “Too much and the customer will run away; too little and the product gets compromised,” says Sapra. The lux levels (a measure of the intensity of lighting) must be just right — 1,000-1,200 lux in the product display, around 400-500 lux in the customer interaction area, and between 300 and 400 lux in the office, he elaborates. “The bikes are dark, the floors are darker. The customer will walk into the store only if it’s well-lit,” says Sapra. For this functional yet quirky design, the company spent around $100 per square foot, informs Aggarwal. Sapra refuses to divulge his own fee. Instead, he adds, “I plan to buy a Harley this Diwali and become an official member [of the HOG]!”
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The buyer for these premium global brands is well-travelled and used to the finer things in life and Sapra knows it. Which is why facilities inside the showrooms in India must compete with their international counterparts, he insists. This entails a lounge, an Internet café, a cafeteria with coffee beans brought in from Brazil — clients are very particular about coffee, Sapra has found — a kids’ play corner and a delivery area from where the customer can ride away in his new car.
The challenge for the architect is to follow the design brief and to create an ambience of luxury when there is a space crunch. And with sky-high real estate prices, Indian luxury showrooms are among the smallest in the world. Of course, budgets are always a sore subject. Both Gujral and Sapra refuse to reveal figures. “You will wake up Income Tax officials and the dealers will kill me,” Sapra says with a wicked grin. On a serious note, he adds, “Clients always whisper an instruction to ‘take care of the budget’.”
Designing a luxury office, on the other hand, allows you to bend some rules, says Sapra, showing his plans for the 9,000 square feet Victorinox head office in Gurgaon. Victorinox India Managing Director Anish Goel had one demand — that the office should have a showroom with products on display. Sapra suggested a white ceiling with the Victorinox symbol in the middle that would merge into a recessed channel running all around an egg-shaped room where the company’s famous Swiss Army knives, cutlery and timepieces would be displayed. The suggestion was forwarded to the Swiss headquarters and approved. Did the Swiss bosses have their own demands?
“Generally, we only listen to the client,” says Sapra, confessing after a pause that, “Sometimes, we don’t even do that.” On several occasions, he admits to talking his clients into practical designs, while maintaining the aesthetic look of the showroom. “If you want to design luxury, you must possess ‘people skills’!”
