Celebration of materials in their untainted form

A mid-century modern and Wabi-Sabi influenced contemporary office, designed by Quirk Studio, in Erode, Tamil Nadu houses an heirloom textiles operation

The balmy city of Erode is the nucleus of Tamil Nadu’s thriving textile industry and is cloaked in a riot of sound and colour. The location celebrates the harmonious binary coexistence of the old and new, both tingeing the city’s history. With its terrain dotted with the presence of factories and industrial plants, Erode is a melting pot of modernised trade and an enduring heritage that its residents have kept alive. Sequestered in one such remote factory premises, abuzz with activity is The Mill Project — an office crafted for a family-run enterprise wherein the patriarchal head and his two sons shoulder the operations. The rugged natural landscape on the fringes of the city, houses the built mass in its vast entirety, offering the space a unique topography to occupy, and evocative of creating an oasis amid barren lands.

A mandate of the client’s needs dictates the requirement for a workplace that is an ode to the rooted context within which the built form is situated, a tribute to the suburban habitat where it all began. The inspiration to sculpt the blank industrial canvas stems from the architecture of the building intrinsically — towering fourteen foot-high ceilings punctuated with large floor-to-ceiling fenestrations overlooking abundant stretches of tropical verdure and the azure skies above.