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First Person Singluar

A Fairy Tale 27-Storey Tower

Aroon Sharma
Jul 2010

Here’s a fairy tale. In 2005, Mrs Nita Ambani was in the spa at the Mandarin Oriental, New York which overlook the Central Park. The contemporary Asian interiors struck her so much that they prompted her to inquire about its designer.

Nita Ambani was no ordinary tourist. She is married to Mukesh Ambani, head of Mumbai, India’s petrochemical giant Reliance Industries, and the 5th richest man in the world. (Lakshmi Mittal, ranked 4th, an Indian resides in London.)

( Forbes had estimated Ambani's net worth at more than $43 billion. Reliance Industries was founded by Mukesh's father, Dhirubhai Ambani, in 1966, and is India's most valuable firm by market capitalization. The couple, with their three children, lived in an imposing 22-storey Mumbai skyscraper. )

Like many rich with means, the Ambanis too wanted a made to order home. They consulted the architecture firms Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates - the designers of the Mandarin Oriental - based in Dallas and Los Angeles. The brief was to draw up the world's largest and most expensive home: A 27-storey skyscraper in downtown Mumbai. It was to cost nearly $2 billion, according to Thomas Johnson, director of marketing at Hirsch Bedner Associates. The architects and designers were asked to go ahead. They altered floor plans, design elements and concepts as the building was re-bricked.

Comparisons were made. A remotely comparable high-rise property in the market was the $70 million triplex penthouse at the Pierre Hotel in New York, designed to resemble a French chateau, and climbing 525 feet in the air. When the Ambani residence was finished in January 2009, it was 550 feet high with 400,000 square feet of interior space.

The Ambani home cost more had a hotel or high-rise of similar size because of its custom measurements and fittings. ( A hotel or a condominium has a common layout, replicated on every floor, and uses the same materials throughout such as door handles, floors, lamps and window treatments.

The Ambani home, called Antilla, differed. No two floors are alike in either plans or materials used. At the request of Mrs Nita Ambani, say the designers, if a metal, wood or crystal was a part of the 9th-floor design, it shouldn't be used on the 11th floor ? The idea was to blend styles and architectural elements with spaces, a feel of consistency, but without repetition.

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