• Project: Greenlab Diamonds Factory, Surat, India
• Architects: Design Work Group
• Area: 16260 m?
• Year of completion: 2022
• Photography: Vinay Panjvani

Design Work Group is in the news for designing GreenLab Diamonds Factory, a first-of-its-kind diamond factory with innovative diamond production processes that manufacture lab-grown diamonds. Greenlab Diamon Factory breaks all the conventional factory aesthetics of boring and lifeless forms and offers a fresh perspective on factory design; a building that rejuvenates an employee?s spirits. Are you excited to know more about this unique lab-grown diamond factory design? Read on to find out why this building is making headlines in the architecture field.

About Design Work Group Architecture

Design Work Group is a firm that highly believes architecture, after all, is a service industry. They try to understand the client?s needs meticulously to arrive at a solution that works on all levels. Their projects can be termed, ?watered-down Geoffrey Bawa? structures that exhibit a sense of tranquillity, often clad with brick cladding, water features, and greenery. Nirmal Van House in Surat features a peaceful villa with koi ponds and generous views of the panoramic river. Design Work Group involves clients in the early designing stage to understand their preferences. It is the client?s building, not the firm’s. Although the ideas arise from the principal architects, the spaces ultimately belong to the client. This architecture firm also believes sustainability is an integral part of every design and creates buildings that are highly contextual and site-centric.

What is Greenlab Diamonds Factory?

Sustainable diamond manufacturing is not a term you hear every day. However, Greenlab Diamonds Factory is a diamond manufacturing factory that feels that it is its responsibility to be socially aware citizens and foster sustainable industrial cultures. Factory and sustainability are not something that you use together in a sentence. Greenlab Diamonds Factory challenges this very thought and tries to build a habit that can be profitable as well as sustainable. It features a four-storey structure with office spaces and production areas, engrossed in lush greenery and calming indoor spaces.

Design Work Group does not use conventional materials, and opts for calmer materials like brick cladding and exposed RCC slabs for this lab-grown diamonds factory design. The front elevation features a large and inviting lobby with office spaces. The working spaces have balconies, decks and open spaces for maximum daylight efficiency. The entire plot of the factory is intensively landscaped so that employees feel at home, even when they are away from home. The rear end contrasts sharply with the front elevation and houses the production areas.

Phase 1 and Phase 2

The first phase of the construction consists of office spaces and production areas spanning around 95000 sq. ft. The second phase takes it up a notch with a building dedicated to diamond polishing and processing that spans 78000 sq. ft. This structure features a visionary triple-height foyer with a hanging deck made from prefabricated metal that acts as an observatory. Skylights wedged into the roof further add to the grandeur of the architecture. The structure also uses mushroom columns in its front elevation, and offers robust structural support, unique aesthetic appeal, and optimizes space. The structures are clandestine with brick cladding, contrasting beautifully with the exposed concrete. Design Work Group ditches the old factory design manifesto to design a factory that makes one feel peaceful, with its lush landscapes, and hanging vegetation in the fa?ade. Who knew that factories could designed in a way that brings comfort to all the human senses and adopt a sustainable way?!

What makes Greenlab further unique is its inviting community spaces. A factory is, traditionally speaking, not somewhere you have vibrant community spaces that foster community interaction and good vibes. But Greenlab defies the convention in this area to build a sit-out and a pavilion between the two planted areas of the buildings that also contain a library. Work Place lunches can now be serene and offer some respite from the hectic work.

Sustainable, but sustainable enough?

Yes, the building is sustainable for a factory and the firm has to be applauded for even going down the sustainable route for the design of a factory. This begs the larger question, is the greenery enough to make a building sustainable? Are we, as an architecture community guilty of praising every building that has a lush landscape in it, as sustainable? A building?s sustainability should also be determined by its embodied energy and carbon footprint in its life cycle. While planting trees and other vegetation is the right way to go about it, it should not be limited to that. Constructing a new building leaves a huge carbon footprint that can be minimised by using various methods used by famous sustainable buildings around the world. It is high time we readjust our glasses and take sustainability in buildings to the next level.

This design paves new ways for architecture. Designs like these prove the value of architecture and an architect- the ability of architecture to solve problems that make the world better. Architecture is not just a service to the people, but also nature. Sustainability and factory design do not go hand in hand, but Design Work Group has struck new ground with their design. If they can, why not the others? Do you agree with the building?s sustainability? Or do you think they could have done a better job? Do you think sustainability goes beyond greenery? Comment below with your thoughts on this!

Sources

• https://www.archdaily.com/1013849/greenlab-diamonds-factory-design-work-group
• https://www.designworkgroup.in/projects/architecture/industrial/greenlab-diamond
• https://uni.xyz/journal/redefining-industrial-spaces-sustainable
• https://archello.com/project/greenlab-diamond-factory-building
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dinesh-suthar-69413b1a7_greenlab-lab-grown-diamond-factory-phase-activity-7146473385760378880-UYdY