• Baradari At City Palace Jaipur

    Adaptive Re-use I Hospitality I F and B I Jaipur, Rajasthan

    Creative Re-use Winner at INSIDE - World Festival of Interiors in Berlin, Baradari at City Palace Jaipur explores how design can bring inherent value to a place when conventions on conservation and adaptive re-use are looked at through a fresh lens.

    CLIENT CITY PALACE JAIPUR I AREA 14,000 SQFT I STATUS COMPLETED IN 2016 I TEAM AMBRISH ARORA, ARUN KULLU, PRIYA JINDAL, CHRISTOPHER MILLER, SANJAY KUMAR I PHOTOGRAPHER EDMUND SUMNER I AWARDS ARCHITECTURE + PRESERVATION CATEGORY WINNER AT ARCHITIZER A+AWARDS 2017, CREATIVE RE-USE CATEGORY WINNER AT INSIDE AWARDS - WORLD FESTIVAL OF INTERIORS 2016 BERLIN
    The fluted marble water cascade helps create a micro-environment that cools the courtyard in summer while drowning out noises from outside
    The site sits within the oldest walled quarter of Jaipur within the City Palace Museum built in the 18th century

    The royal family of Jaipur invited Studio Lotus to redevelop the former City Palace Café as a 14,000-sqft fine dining destination comprising a private dining area, bar, various lounges, and a quick service counter while retaining current back-of-the house facilities.

    The courtyard also serves as a semi-private spine that connects the Museum and the city through a secondary entrance
    The Baradari-inspired Pavilion is built using metal, fluted marble and mirror heightening the historic vocabulary of the existing buildings

    Existing buildings were given a new expression by stripping off paint and cement plaster layers. The exposed rubble masonry was then repaired with traditional lime mortar with details in lime plaster. A key conceptual move was to use the courtyard as a binding element for the new program rather than an extension. An existing intermediate structure, a toilet block, was dismantled from the courtyard to open up the area visually and spatially. A Pavilion in the form of a Baradari was inserted as a bar into the courtyard to divide yet link the two zones that flank it.

    View from the North Verandah towards the courtyard shows the original structure and masonry after the application of key restoration ideas
    View from the upper level VIP lounge above the South Verandah towards the courtyard
    An intensive study detailed how existing & additional spaces would function for the expanded program that included the Private Dining Room

    The newly-designed areas now accommodate 200 covers across its breadth of spaces. The concept seeks to create a balanced interplay of historic revelations and contemporary additions: both drawing from and interpreting the underlying Indo-Sarcenic influences of Jaipur’s architectural history. Traditional crafts of Jaipur like Thikri work, bespoke casting and foundry work, furniture and stone work have been worked upon in this new idiom – whether it was through finding new form or using them in a new manner for a new use.

    Private Lounge with Thikri work on the ceiling shows how the reinterpreted patterns infuse modernity and artisanal skills in the narrative
    View of the South Verandah

    The skilled artistry of local craftsmen in marble is given a graphic vocabulary for flooring, the Pavilion, dado work, benches, table tops and more. Built in handcrafted marble and brass, the contemporary expression of the Baradari-inspired Pavilion heightens the surrounding historic vocabulary and gives the place its key identity. Mild steel and brass are used for bespoke lighting and door design. Constrained budgets encouraged the re-use of furniture salvaged from the Palace, alongside the new, with patterns inspired from hybrid influences to give them a fresh lease of life.

    Mild steel and brass are used for bespoke lighting and door design as seen from the Bar Lounge
    From structure to flooring to furniture units, stone masonry and inlay work have been given new expressions
    The contemporary expression of the Baradari-inspired Pavilion becomes a marker of today in the building’s timeline

    Several countries in Asia have a repertoire of historic buildings but more importantly there are countries such as India, which have a rich legacy of Living Tradition of crafts and arts that are dying as they have been unable to reinvent themselves to today’s ideas and needs. Baradari serves to be a demonstration of how active engagement of these craftsmen and artisans in new design applications can bring both, an exciting flavour to the project, and open up new ways of thinking for these artisans.

    Marble benches line the deep verandahs enveloping the courtyard to create intimate dining spaces
    The exquisite handcrafted marble work includes a fluted water cascade that terminates the courtyard
    The restaurant captures how constrained budgets encouraged the team to use a combination of new & existing furniture salvaged from the Palace

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