The Plaza, Worli is a high end luxury retail development promoted by the prestigious Bombay Realty group of Mumbai. The 3 acre project is located in the heart of the upmarket district of Worli in Mumbai. The scheme comprises an elegant courtyard surrounded by colonnades which integrates a restored historic mill structure at one end. It will house exclusive fashion stores, lifestyle brands, al fresco dining and an entertainment platform.
AECOM’s design brief was to provide an intimate and luxurious setting for this project which would set new standards for retail plazas in India and internationally. The design approach centres on a series of iconic canopies, their sculptural forms conceived as an abstraction of a tree canopy, providing a dappled shade, and forming the signature style of this development. Water features, green walls and fascias and vibrant planting are crafted into a contemporary design redefining the Plaza as a destination in itself. A minimal palette of complementary materials is proposed – dark local granites, reflective steel, and lush greenery – to create a classically European influenced space, but with an avant-garde and playful twist which responds to the local context.
The scheme is dynamic in its design response in that it does not follow the prevailing mall typology of a completely controlled internal environment. The abstract trees provide a solution to the key technical challenge of the project – to modulate the micro-climate in the courtyard and create a comfortable environment for visitors. The canopies work passively to give a contiguous shelter from the sun and the monsoon rains, and creation of a cooling effect to help mitigate the high temperatures and humidity. Bespoke misting nozzles integrated into the canopy columns emit a mist which drops the temperature by 2-3 degrees, even at 80% humidity, which prolongs the season for outdoor usage significantly.
The Plaza | Mumbai India | AECOM
AECOM Team: Mark Blackwell, Peter Widdrington, Laurens Costeris, Erika Uribe, Akshay Deshpande, Malavika Samanta, Shantesh Kelvekar, Shikha Narula
Structural Engineering of Canopies: Buro Happold
Architecture: Bombay Realty in-house team
Visualisations: Oaker Ltd.
Client: Bombay Realty group, Mumbai.
