Antilia Update: Not Necessarily the Biggest Monster Home

It appears that we may have maligned Mukesh Ambani and Perkins+Will in an earlier post; we called his 60 storey house a new Versailles and a garish display of excess.

Ralph Johnson of Perkins + Will tell Architectural Record that “There’s been a lot of crazy things floating around,but there’s actually a lot of positive things to talk about because it’s an interesting building.”

Evidently the family is only occupying 35,000 square feet, positively modest by American billionaire standards, and it is clad in "vertical gardens" to help shade the building and reduce the urban heat island effect. “You can use the whole wall almost like a tree and increase the green area of the site by five or 10 times over what it would be if you just did a green roof,” Johnson observers. “It’s a prototype for buildings of the future.” We stand so corrected. ::Architectural Record

"Perkins + Will designed Antilia, a 24-story corporate meeting facility and private residence, now under construction in Mumbai (top). The tower features several garden levels and a trellis, which supports panels of hydroponically grown plans, that act like a green band weaving in and out of the building to demarcate different program elements (middle). A large garden occupying a floor near the tower’s mid-section will separate the corporate meeting facility and parking levels from residential space above."

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