A 1,26,600 sq ft plot in India's brass city, planned as the place where buyers come to see, source, meet and stay: exhibition and retail below, convention halls in the middle, 70 rooms above and an open exhibition deck on the roof.
Moradabad is a city of exporters whose buyers fly in to source brassware and handicrafts, with nowhere built for that visit. The plan gives them one address: a sourcing and convention centre with a hotel inside it. Across six levels and 2,21,522 sq ft, seventy per cent of the building is given to exhibition and convention space and thirty per cent to rooms, cafés and retail, so a buyer can walk the shops in the basement, sit in a convention hall upstairs, and sleep two floors above.
A 1,26,600 sq ft plot in Moradabad, and a question from the owners: what should it become to serve the city's export trade and the buyers who visit it?
Moradabad's economy is export: buyers arrive to source brass and handicrafts, but the city has no single place to show them the trade, host their meetings and put them up.
We planned the building around the buyer's visit: exhibition and retail at the base, convention halls in the middle, rooms above, and an open exhibition deck on the roof — seventy per cent of the area for showing and meeting, thirty for staying and eating.
116 shops and a 4,700 sq ft exhibit hall in the basement; a 20,600 sq ft convention hall with its own entrance at ground; two halls of 12,300 and 9,900 sq ft on the first floor; 35 rooms with a gym, spa and yoga area on the second; 35 rooms, a 4,700 sq ft café and a display gallery on the third; and a rooftop exhibition deck with a live kitchen for 300.
The design intent covers zoning, the area programme, floor layouts, the facade concept and interior inspiration for every part of the building.
A plan that fits the city: a building where Moradabad's exporters can show their work and their buyers can source, meet and stay in one place — and that earns from all four, not from rooms alone.
