Mahindra Automobile Design Studio Extension
Workspace Architecture I Mumbai, Maharashtra
Client Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd
Area 15,410 Sq.ft
Completed 2025
Photographer Rajesh Vora
Team Vaishali Mangalvedhekar, Michelle Pereira, Nirmohi Kathrecha, Divya Gyanchandani
Structural Consultants GMR Consultants
MEP Consultants MEPTEK Consultants
Lighting Consultants Lighting Ergonomics
Civil Contractor Zenith Infra
Interior Contractor Jhakad Enterprises LLP
Photographer Niveditaa Gupta
Should spatial needs shift, the entire frame can be dismantled and materials reused elsewhere, transforming potential waste into a circulating resource.
Extending the Mahindra & Mahindra Automobile Design Studio they designed in 2013, SJK Architects have created a structure that exists in three tenses at once. The design honours the past through a sharp black steel framework that carries forward material memory, serves the present by integrating cutting-edge technology within crafted space, and anticipates the future through complete disassembly. Should spatial needs shift, the entire frame can be dismantled and materials reused elsewhere, transforming potential waste into a circulating resource. In doing so, the project demonstrates a compelling sustainable model for India's fast-paced industrial landscape: architecture that evolves rather than becomes obsolete.
In 2013, SJK Architects designed a design studio for Mahindra & Mahindra's automobile team within their 64-acre factory campus in Kandivali, Mumbai. The space was conceived as a place that would inspire creativity—a refuge from the mechanical rhythm of factory life, where hand-finished grey plaster walls, concrete floors, and dramatic natural light created an environment that felt more atelier-like than industrial shed.
Twelve years later, the firm was commissioned again to design an extension. The company had grown significantly, the automobile industry had evolved, and the tools of the trade had transformed entirely. The brief was straightforward: create a highly tech-equipped space for 1:1 automobile prototyping, including a German robotic arm—the first of its kind in India. Yet the real challenge was far more complex: how do you bridge a highly crafted, poetic Phase 1 with a Phase 2 driven by intense technological demands? How do you integrate two phases visually and spatially when working within the constraints of an industrial shed vocabulary? And how do you do all of this on a tight timeline and budget that wouldn't allow for expensive materials like Corten steel that gave the original structure its character?
SJK Architects' response was to design a building that exists in three tenses at once: honouring the past through material and spatial continuity, serving the present with technical precision, and anticipating the future through adaptability. The entire structure is designed for disassembly; as and when spatial needs shift, the entire structural frame can be dismantled and materials reused elsewhere, drastically minimising embedded carbon emissions and landfill waste.
Zoning
The 21 m by 67 m project site abuts the southern edge of the existing facility and extends along the edge of the original courtyard, which is retained and widened as a landscaped social space. The layout is anchored by a central 8 m by 17 m clay contouring area (Clay Bay) where full-scale vehicle modelling takes place. Functions requiring enclosure and controlled lighting—the paint booth, paint kitchen, and hard modelling area—are positioned towards the west. Service areas are planned towards the east, along existing industrial sheds. The courtyard-facing edge accommodates functions like the pantry, library, and model-makers' work desks, which benefit from natural light and access to the landscape.
The framework is exposed deliberately, each element proportioned and every connection detailed to create a visually appealing space that serves as the perfect backdrop to the act of creating well-designed automobiles.
Creating Visual Unity Through a Sharp Black Steel Framework
A sharp black steel framework establishes the project's visual and structural backbone. The framework is exposed deliberately, each element proportioned and every connection detailed to create a visually appealing space that serves as the perfect backdrop to the act of creating well-designed automobiles. The original studio's palette—black steel, grey cement plaster, concrete—carries forward into the extension. The difference emerges in the precision of execution. The original studio, built with the technology available in 2013, carried the subtle irregularities of older fabrication methods. The extension's steel, by contrast, is razor-sharp. Pre-engineered off-site with millimetre precision, the black-painted structural profiles celebrate the evolution in construction technology. Each frame is custom-profiled to bear only required loads—thicker where forces concentrate, slimmer where they don't—creating structural efficiency that doubles as visual elegance. Machine precision complements human touch; technical evolution honours material memory. All partition walls are held at 4.3 metres rather than rising to the full 7.5-metre height, ensuring the black-painted roof reads as one continuous canopy unifying both structures. This gesture proves critical: it makes the two phases—despite the twelve-year gap and different technological approaches—feel like one coherent whole.
Bridging Two Phases Spatially Through Courtyard and Skylit Street
Working within industrial shed constraints, two crucial spatial gestures bridge the phases. The landscaped courtyard from the original design is retained and widened, transforming into a communal centre that anchors both old and new. This outdoor space provides breathing room in an otherwise dense industrial campus, offering a place for informal exchange and visual connection between the two phases. The second gesture is more dramatic. A connecting street is carved into the 2.5-metre gap between structures, topped with a continuous skylight and lined with potted plants. This luminous threshold transforms what could have been a utilitarian corridor into a refreshing spatial experience. In an otherwise completely sealed-off shell, the changing quality of light in this space marks the passage of time through the day, reconnecting users with natural rhythms. The southern wall of the original studio (which forms one edge of the street) is demolished and replaced with rolling shutters, allowing the two buildings to function as one expansive workspace when needed. Together, the courtyard and skylit street create spatial continuity that makes the seam between old and new disappear.
This outdoor space provides breathing room in an otherwise dense industrial campus, offering a place for informal exchange and visual connection between the two phases.
Translating Technical Demands Into Cinematic Volumes
The new studio needed to accommodate full-scale modelling of SUVs, vans, and utility vehicles. Working with structural consultants, the architects have achieved an 18-metre column-free span and a 7.5-metre height—the maximum possible within site and budget constraints. An 8 m by 17m clay contouring area (the Clay Bay) sits at the centre, with a 6-metre clearance zone ensuring seamless vehicle movement. The crux of the project was integrating sharp and demanding technology—lines of light, CNC robotic arms—while ensuring human comfort and an inspiring environment. The German robotic arm in the Clay Bay area imposed the most exacting requirements. Global standards mandated a sealed black box eliminating all natural light, with lighting at precisely 6500K and temperatures between 18–20°C. The cool, even illumination was necessary to reveal the subtlest surface contours in the high-performance Japanese clay, while strict thermal control would protect the clay's integrity. The design transforms these requirements into spatial drama. A suspended steel frame holds linear light strips at the exact colour temperature, while the supporting apparatus recedes behind ceiling edges, creating the illusion that the entire surface floats weightlessly above. The monochromatic palette of black and white becomes powerfully sculptural. As a result, the space feels cinematic—technical necessity reimagined as poetry, where precision technology becomes the stage for creative work.
Humanising an Industrial Environment Through Scaled-Down Elements, Landscape, and Craft
The design humanises a highly industrial environment by scaling elements down to human proportions and weaving in nature. The skylit street, with its lemongrass planters, offers a much-needed respite from the intensity of technical work. Clerestory windows positioned below the pitched roof offer glimpses of greenery—visual escapes that maintain connection with the outside world. Along the northern courtyard-facing edge, where functions like the pantry, library, and model-makers' desks reside, wooden wall panelling, cane chairs, and ship-style pendant lights are planned to infuse warmth. Furthermore, dense lemongrass planting creates a lush, fragrant boundary. On the harsh southern edge—exposed to heat and truck traffic—a stainless-steel cable trellis supports climbing creepers, creating a living wall that breathes and grows. Remarkably, employees from neighbouring facilities have begun tending these plants, cultivating shared stewardship beyond property lines. The interiors embrace imperfection deliberately. The hand-trowelled grey cement plaster carries subtle inconsistencies. The polished concrete floors reveal their grit. Tonal variations emerge from the vacuum-dewatered concrete shaped by regional climatic conditions. These human traces offer a warm counterpoint to the factory-finished elements—the pre-engineered steel portals, automated shutters, German steel plates, and robotic arm beneath a taut Barrisol ceiling. High-tech innovation remains grounded in the reality of human craft, ensuring the space inspires creativity rather than intimidating it.
High-tech innovation remains grounded in the reality of human craft, ensuring the space inspires creativity rather than intimidating it.
Anticipating Future Needs Through Design for Disassembly
While the design carefully balances past and present, it also anticipates an uncertain future. The entire structure is designed for disassembly so materials can be reused elsewhere if and when needed. The entire extension is designed as a pre-engineered portal frame fabricated off-site and assembled on-site in just 20 days. All structural connections are bolted rather than welded, avoiding the carbon emissions and energy demands of welding while enabling complete disassembly. Should the facility need to expand, relocate, or reconfigure, the entire frame can be dismantled and its materials reused elsewhere. While the walls cannot be relocated, they're built in aerated concrete that can be repurposed in construction or roadworks. The design drastically reduces potential demolition waste and the embodied carbon associated with new material production. This approach fundamentally reimagines the relationship between building and time. Architecture is designed to evolve rather than become obsolete, treating material circularity as both an environmental imperative and design elegance.
Designing for Multiple Futures // Architecture That Evolves
Beyond its immediate function, the project addresses three critical needs. For the construction sector, it demonstrates that designing for disassembly works within India's material realities and budget constraints—every bolted connection reducing future waste while enabling present efficiency. For industrial operations moving at technology's pace, it proves buildings can remain useful precisely because they're designed to transform, eliminating the obsolescence that turns functional structures into demolition candidates. And for the creative workforce, it offers a daily environment where demanding technology doesn't dominate human experience—where skylit thresholds offer respite, where handcrafted surfaces ground digital precision, where the act of designing vehicles unfolds within space that itself inspires design. The extension charts a path where architecture evolves alongside the industries and people it serves.
A series of industrial sheds to be converted for the most glamorous and trendy role in the Automobile industry – the styling studio. The challenges were to retain the footprint and the original MS portals and build an entirely new facility with offices, workshops, display areas and recreational spaces. We have used just concrete and steel in their various forms and textures. The play of light and shadow and minute steel details, along with the challenge of working with an undocumented existing structure that refused to take any loads has led to a deceptively light and nuanced office architecture design.
