Google India continues AHMM’s collaboration with the company established through projects including 6 Pancras Square and Google Berlin, and will be the company’s flagship building in the south Indian capital city of Hyderabad. Driven by a nationwide policy to establish and promote centres for expertise and innovation in India’s technological sector, the 3 million square foot elliptical structure will be the largest Google owned and operated campus building outside the Mountain View headquarters.
Representing a further development of AHMM’s concept of the flexible universal building, the campus will be a workplace for 18,000 users, in an architectural idiom that celebrates the most enduring quality of shared space and place-making: as a climate sensitive and flexible shelter, enhanced by a low-energy and upgradable servicing for comfort, across an ensemble of delightful spaces. Its porous envelope will help to moderate the local climate, offering relief, shade, light and air to staff and visitors.
The scheme has been developed through a series of iterative 3D-printed massing studies that respond to current and future-flexible functional requirements, climatic conditions, topography, cultural and political drivers, and the demands of the developing city.
Building on AHMM’s experience in London and Berlin, and continuing the concept of ‘theatre, stage set and props’, hub areas are distributed evenly across each level to encourage promenades through the building, and bespoke ‘props’ used to respond to working processes.
