Our Office

The new Verdurous campus on the outskirts of Mysore city is a living embodiment of the values on which the company is founded and built. The layout and form are developed around the themes of transparency and consistency and reflect the old adage what’s on the inside that counts. The focus element of the campus is a large banyan tree on the edge of the site, revered in India and believed to be an embodiment of the universal soul. The shape of the office building was optimized to make the most of the micro-climate at the site and to maximize exposure to the North and the East, while cutting out the heat gain from the West and the South. The exposed brick walls of the office complex are built with 200 mm wide stabilized earth blocks made at site with local soil and fly-ask based Portland Pozzolana Cement (PPC) cement. The ‘low-embodied energy’ structure exploits the East-West gradient at site to enhance ventilation at various levels and maximize use of the built space.

The sloping roof structure is fabricated with three levels on either side of the peak and the clay tiles forming the roof provide the perfect setting for a spectacular cascade to drain the nearly 1000 mm of rainfall that Mysore witnesses during the average year. The rain water is channeled into a series of small open tanks and finally into a rain water storage tank with a view to using the surplus water to irrigate the indigenous species of flora and grasses on the site. Local unpolished stone is used for flooring along corridors and in areas expected to experience excessive wear. Flooring for the work spaces, the meeting room and the seminar hall are made with a ‘silver wood’ base frame and 20mm thick plywood sheets finished with a protective layer of polish. A large portion of the timber used at site for door frames and columns is extracted from structures that were previously knocked down and reused after appropriate treatment. The work spaces are designed to benefit from sunlight and ventilation during the day providing adequate comfort for the occupants without the need for mechanical ventilation or artificial illumination.