‘Indigo Deli’ by sameep padora and associates, mumbai, india all images courtesy of sameep padora and associates. Designed by mumbai-based firm Sameep Padora And Associates, the ‘Indigo Deli’, a delicatessen and dine-in restaurant transforms a mundane retail space within the palladium mall in mumbai, india. Denying the rigid geometries of the mall context, an undulating and interlocking structure swoops above the tables within the dining area. combining the qualities of a dome and surface, the hybrid form employs the structural strengths of both applications. The wooden armature is formed with rough textured plywood, contrasting the sleek copper lighting fixtures and built in details.

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The design-build project began as a parametric exploration during the design process. manufacturing of the unique sections began with CNC routing and systematic assemblage. once connected, the element was hung from the overhead RCC slab from threaded steel rods which have been affixed into a double thickness vertical plywood panel. this connection allows for accurate leveling through the entire length of the interior.

Project: Indigo Deli
Location: Lower Parel, Mumbai, India
Architects: Sameep Padora & Associates
Design Team: Sameep Padora, Pankaj Mhatre, Shreya Poddar, Vinay Mathias
Area: 4500 sq. ft.

About Sameep Padora And Associates: Approach and Philosophy

As a practice we at sP+a believe that India’s vast breadth of socio-cultural environments require multifarious means of engaging with the country’s varying contexts. Type, Program, Design and Building processes are subservient to the immediacy of each project’s unique frame of reference. The studio’s approach hence is to look to context as a repository of latent resources connecting production process and network’s, appropriating techniques beyond their traditional use while allowing them to evolve and persist not just through preservation but more so through evolution.

Our practice questions the nostalgia involved with the static ‘museumification’ of craft and tradition as well as the nature of what today comprises the ‘regional’ in contexts amplified by their place in global and regional networks. This attitude enables the practice to look at traditional project types, projecting their formal / relational history within the paradigms of current socio-economic forces. The studio structure actively engages with research, collaborations and collective models of practice not as isolated individual formats but as symbiotic streams feeding into each other. We advocate this hybrid model as an alternative to the traditional architectural practice, believing that this enables us to respond to the specificity of the local by evolving methodologies of extreme subjectivity