Tuesday 17 May 2016

RESIDENTIAL DESIGN: THINKING OUT OF THE BOX

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Riverdale is a large-scale residential Project by Duville Estates located along the banks of Mula-Mutha River with a picturesque view. It is spread over 31 acres of land and will be constructed in three different plots – under the name of Riverdale Heights comprising of 1BHK & 2BHK apartments, Riverdale Residences – 2 & 3 BHK apartments and Duplexes and Riverdale Grand – 4 BHK & 5 BHK residential apartments.

The ongoing phase of Riverdale Heights, a 8.84 lakh sqft development, in a plot of 4.04 acres comprising of ground, three levels of parking and 5 towers of 23 habitable floors each. Altogether, 590 flats with club house, double height banquet hall, gym, childrens’ play area, tennis & badminton courts, swimming pool with glass canopy, floating pod etc as amenities.

The infrastructure and utilities consists of solar powered common area lighting, reticulated gas system, treated water for both domestic and flushing purposes, organic waste converter, closed circuit TV in common areas, data and telephone connections in rooms, power back-up, kitchen cabinet/ modular kitchen and a landscaped podium etc.

The uniqueness of this project is its glass facade i.e. curtain glazing at one face of every bed room & living room, giving a feel of a strong connection to the external views and natural landscape beyond. The façade is further articulated with ACP ribbons and various types of louvers and metal screens.

MASTERS has been associated with this project in the month of May 2015 when the scheme design had already been substantially frozen and advanced to a detailed design stage. It was thus a considerable challenge for the team to take control over the scheme of things midway and meet the various aspirations of the Client, one of which was to carry the project swiftly to the tender stage while adhering to a stringent construction budget.

MASTERS within a very short period of time, undertook a detailed assessment of the design and put a detailed cost plan in place, thereby triggering a concern about the big gap between the anticipated cost of the project as against the Client’s budget. This in turn had all the stakeholders of the project convinced about the need for a strong value engineering exercise.

The value engineering work, which was coordinated by MASTERS commenced with a detailed review of first principles of space planning and traversed almost every area of the project ranging from structural design, finishing, MEP services, external development, procurement strategies, including getting quotes from all major items from market and also identifying the items to be outsourced etc.

The aim being to bring about a cost reduction without affecting the Client’s intent to have a flagship project, which would please customers and establish their brand.

Some of the initiatives which were implemented included :

1) Space planning interventions including - re-evaluation of the design of a lobby to improve the efficiency of the car park with an overall reduction of 3780 sq.ft.; reallocation of services to release a pocket of approximately 5,909 sq.ft spread over three parking floors for car parks; modifying the typical lobby area to save approximately 11,244 sq.ft.; shifting the fire refuge area outside the building footprint increasing number of saleable units.

2) Structural design interventions, including – standardization of wall thickness, conversion of compound wall, planter walls, landscape walls, storm water drain to either plum concrete or brickwork from earlier RCC walls; converting a huge fill over the podium from light weight filling to sand filling as the design had not factored the difference of soft-scape and hard-scape areas, re-utilization of excavated rocks in plum concrete, soling below roads etc.

3) Finishing – Optimization of finishes, including for external development.

4) MEP Services – review of the load calculations etc thus effecting a reduction in the number of transformers, undertaking a traffic study and market study to optimize the design of elevators, review of security and fire systems with improvements in some instances.

With this out-of-the box approach, the team comprising MASTERS and other project stakeholders was able to bring about a reduction of approximately 15% in the overall project estimate with the value management exercise still in progress. This in itself is a formidable achievement against a stringent initial budget, which is sure to assist our Client in its endeavour to establish a formidable brand in the highly competitive housing market in Pune.

Riverdale
Riverdale Pune 1
riverdale-heights-2


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Contact us - +91 22 64567600

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