GUJARAT INT'l FINANCE TEC-CITY (GIFT) | Block Package F | 55 fl x 1 | 45 fl x 1 | App

[Jai]

X-posted from my thread in the international forum

==========================================================

Block Package F -- Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, Gandhinagar

This yet-to-be-formally-named commercial project, currently known by its Block Package designation, is just one of the many towers coming up in India's largest greenfield megaproject, the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT). At 55 and 45 floors, the towers in Block Package E will be one of the many 50+ storied towers in the Gandhinagar-GIFT skyline.

------==--=--==-------

Its necessary to first give some background on the GIFT project itself:

Located at Gandhinagar, the capital city of the über-industrial Indian state of Gujarat, and nearby the state's commercial capital of Ahmedabad, the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City will be one of the world's largest and most modern financial hubs.

From its already lofty original development goals, GIFT has since grown manifold to literally an entire city's central business district that will be larger than Paris's La Defense, Tokyo's Shinjuku, London's Dockyards and Shanghai's Pudong financial districts. It will house over a million people with millions more commuting there daily.

Well placed between the political and commercial capitals of Gujarat, GIFT is a public-private partnership basically designed to kick Mumbai in the FDI balls and establish itself as a world player. It will is India's first major supertall Central Business District project that is designed to be the focal point of both the world's and India's booming financial services market by providing companies with all those things Mumbai is still developing: comprehensive infrastructure, power, verticalized office space, and a well designed, planned and expandable urban form. Its strong proximity and infrastructure connectivity with Mumbai ensures that mutually beneficial development occurs between the two metros.


^ An overhead view of the new GIFT CBD. Only half the planned buildings are shown in the above rendering.

The scale of GIFT is singularly massive, unparalleled in the world except a handfull of Dubai megaprojects, none of those which can hold a candle to GIFT's goals of economic sustainability, integration and scalability.

Gujarat International Finance Tec-City will have 312 tall buildings — the tallest being the signature Diamond Tower with 87 floors; another 40 buildings with more than 50 floors and many more with 24 plus floors of height. The entire project is not only fully approved but already completely sold out due to insane demand. Construction will begin later this year.

For more information on GIFT as a whole, please check out the GIFT thread in General Urban Developments forum for a summary of the main developments and the GIFT thread in the SSC India forum for more detailed discussions.

------==--=--==-------


Located on block --(or in GIFT development parlance "Package", in reference to each site being a separate instance of public-private development partnerships)-- "Package F", the two towers are designed by Shanghai-based ECADI architects, the master planners of many of Shanghai's newest projects, will be mixed Commercial and Retail in use, which will make them amongst tallest commercial projects in India.



The tallest of the two buildings in this project will stand at 55 floors, and the other at 45 floors. They will be joined by a skybridge about halfway up. The bottom floors of both towers will be well integrated into the streetscape with retail shops and malls.




The towers are located within the deep cluster of skyscrapers strung along the riverfront of the GIFT project, nearby the Gateway Towers


^ The towers are somewhat obscured in the center part of the skyline

The tower has been completely approved by all governing and oversight bodies and will be constructed in the first phase of the project. Construction is expected to begin later this year, but may be put on hold if more redesigns/upscaling of the project is in the offing.




Cheers,
Jai

PS: Thanks to the Indian Skyscraper Blog and the many SSC India members for help with the writeup and all the research!

[Jai]

edit- nevermind

[Illusionist]

nice start Jai.
hope they dont change the design to some PWD building.

[GJ10]

Twin Tower Project at GIFT gets approval

Approval has been given for the construction of a 210 meter ‘Garba Tower’ at Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT), which is under construction in Gujarat, the western most state in India.

Garba Tower is a twin tower project and the tallest stands at a height of 210 meters. The architect for the project is Shanghai-based ECADI.

The 50-storey Garba Tower features two towers, with fully glazed facades. The taller tower will feature 50 storeys, with diagrid pattern, and the shorter tower with 45 storeys, will sport a simple square grid pattern.

The towers are designed with slight angles at places, lending an illusion of a twist to the structure. The structure will be designed to reveal several floors in the middle of each tower. Both the towers will be connected with a sky-bridge.

The street level of both the towers will house retail space and the rest of it will have commercial accommodations.

GIFT aspires to cater to India’s large financial services potential by offering global firms a world-class infrastructure and facilities. It will have a special economic zone (SEZ), international education zone, integrated townships, an entertainment zone, hotels, a convention center, an international techno park, software technology parks, shopping malls, stock exchanges and service units. Construction is slated for late 2009.

[Marathaman]

^Good news!

[todscreen]

this is ridiculous. fat americans in India?

[natarajan1986]

Have to safeguard against attacks like september 11,as sea itself not safe

[zenith_suv]

Approval has been given for the construction of a 210 meter ‘Garba Tower’ at Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT), which is under construction in Gujarat, the western most state in India.

Eh , approval has been given now and construction was underway even before approval was given , or is it something I do not know.

[India101]

^Even I was confused when I read that.

[todscreen]

this project sounds fishy to me. modi is an awful person...but i heard hes good with the ladies.

[Jai]

tod, seriously dude, do you post strung out or something?

[mihir1310]

Originally Posted by zenith_suv

Eh , approval has been given now and construction was underway even before approval was given , or is it something I do not know.

err same here.. What they perhaps meant was that approval is for the building , in the ENTIRE PROJECT WHICH IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION.. Bad grammar maybe , from our journos

[india]

Originally Posted by Jai

tod, seriously dude, do you post strung out or something?

! He's not entirely wrong, though.

[vaibhav]

is its construction started?

[sagar.ar]

Gujarat is trying to attract the financial district by showing flashy Architectural images. I think the ambition to attract the such sector is good. But copying the fancy architecture from Manhattan or Dubai is not the answer. There should be a thought given to understand urban process.

[India101]

^What did it copy from Manhattan or Dubai?

[Suncity]

Man who built Navi Mumbai is in Gujarat

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/c...ow/5598045.cms

AHMEDABAD: One of the most ambitious projects to get hit in the meltdown was Gujarat International Financial Tec-City (GIFT). With the tide turning, slowly but steadily, there is a sudden spurt of activity at the ground zero along Sabarmati in Gandhinagar. And, the man in command is the one who built Navi Mumbai, laid the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and built three international airports.

Having recently taken over as director in GIFT Company Ltd., RK Jha, 65, says with the kind of support he is getting from state government, people will start moving into GIFT by 2011-end. Already, civil work began on January 15. Work on basic infrastructure for road, water and sewage lives would be completed by the year-end and construction of buildings would commence in early 2011.

"While it will take 10 years to execute the entire project, certain pockets within GIFT area will come alive in two years," says Jha, who has over 44 years of professional experience, including a 25-year stint with City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra CIDCO’s New Town Development Authority of Navi Mumbai.

This is the first time that he is moving out of Mumbai and Ahmedabad has already left him impressed. "I have found the bureaucracy here very pro-active and the political leadership quite determined about the GIFT project," he says.

"There is a huge potential in GIFT, especially after the Dubai’s changing fortunes. GIFT will rival International Financial Centres (IFCs) in Dubai, Hong Kong and Mauritius. Many Mumbai-based corporates, who have space constraints, would like to move here," says Jha.

The plan, he says, is to provide state-of-the-art infrastructure in GIFT which will come under a special economic zone (SEZ). Eventually, by 2020, GIFT would accomodate about 40 lakh people, who would be staying in the surroundings of the central business district. Transportation would be a major challenge and the revised metro rail plan has incorporated GIFT along the route.

[Jai]

Stumbled on some more information on this particular building.

It was designed by CHA:COL Chinmaya + Apurva architects. From their website:

GIFT is a proposed $12 billion development in the western state of Gujarat in India. The Masterplan, jointly proposed by clients in India using international consultants, envisages a new city with state-of-the-art infrastructure that will serve a commercial/financial hub, housing and a range of cultural and institutional facilities.


Program and Background:
The site required a proposal for a 265 m high twin tower complex occupying a corner location in the commercial zoned ring along the riverfront. Existing simulaneously in two environments -- LA and India -- helped inform our perspective in taking cues from both. The rich tapestry of existing regional cultural and architectural history in Gujarat coupled with technological and digital ideas developed in our explorations in California gave it a distinct perspective.

Design Stategy: The two proposed towers for the site as seen as a pair of interconnected figures, joined together in a uniquely human posture.

Corner Condition: The proposal occupies an important urban location within the overall Masterplan.

Interconntectedness: The towers are seen as mutually connected, both physically and architecturally

Vertical Zoning: The towers occupy multiple conditions, whether at the street level, at an elevated sky lobby, or at a rooftop terrace.

Dynamic Geometry: This design proposal seeks to take advantage of geometric possibilities of a varying floor plate system along a constant structural core and tube grit.

Archicentral calls this building "Fairwood Building"

Los Angeles-based husband-wife studio, CHA:COL (Chinmaya+Apurva Collaborative), recently designed the Fairwood Building as part of a proposed Infrastructure City for hi-tech services in western India. The towers, that aim to replicate interconnected figures, will benefit the growing commercial district with their programmatic elements.

The commercial spaces and landscaped public areas of the 265 meter high building will fuse into the $12 billion urban development scheme. The Fairwood building continues the ‘urban wall’, which runs along the riverfront, by not disturbing the fluid pedestrian circulation that allows access to open areas within the development.



Metaphorically, the towers were envisioned as a pair of interconnected figures. Such ideas were initiated after studies of design principles evident in regional architectural typologies were investigated. Structurally, these inter-connected spaces are designed for vertical zoning such that the areas developed at the street level, rootftop terrace level or elevated sky level, work around a dense core. Dense spaces are closer to the core while more open rest on the perimeter of the building.



The towers are sheathed in a double-layered envelope, a glass curtain wall which encloses the primary structure and an externally offset louvered screen system. The triangulated gird system curtain wall is adapted into modules based on ruling lines along a developable surface. The insulated glazing system allows clarity, transparency and adaptability within the commercial office spaces. The operable louver/ shading system is aligned along vertical surfaces to receive maximum solar heat gain. A mechanized solar screen system and an integral ceramic fritTed layer will animate the façade and provide thermal functionality.

What's to be noted is that this tower is 265 m in height. Comparing it to the other buildings in the skyline makes it clear that a number of GIFT's towers will be supertall height.