smallprojects

britishindia offices

corporate headquarters for the
britishindia clothing company.

The BritishIndia headquarters
was commissioned to house all its
needs under a single roof - its
owners, being in the business of
fashion were themselves desirous
of a fashion statement along the
lines of the industrial steel and
concrete sheds of New York. They
were given a brick shed instead.

Not any old shed however. For its
given activities having to do with
the wheelings and dealings of the
rag trade, the building was to be
a massive ark of austerity and a
convent for the redemption of sin.

Brick skirtings and tortured steel,
washrooms as altars for cleasing,
air-handling from black chimneys
and monastic brick walls, pipes in
raw for plumbing and colossal-
order downpipe colonnades all
made for an aesthetic of the
Cistercian industrial unromantic.