NEWDELHI: Ghaziabad has a new landmark—an upside down clubhouse, part of the Meriton Group’s Orange County residential complex. The story goes that while a modern clubhouse was under construction, an ancient Roman structure suddenly fell out of the sky and landed upside down on the unfinished building. So the architect simply modified the design and added additional space to the existing building. The ‘changes’ pushed the construction cost to Rs 11.5 crore, but it has made the upside-down Caracella clubhouse the dekko in Indirapuram. Concocted by the developers, the story adds colour to the unusual, yellow structure. According to them, as a novel concept, it was not possible to estimate the cost, but look at the pains they took to get it done—the planning and design took the whole of January 2010, while the actual construction took another 15 months.
The clubhouse was built after most of the 900 luxury apartments had been sold. “We just wanted something different, that hadn’t been attempted by anyone in India earlier,” says Amit Modi, Director of the NCR-based Meriton group. It was inspired by an inverted amusement park building in Florida, USA, which Meriton director Avnish Agarwal saw nearly a decade ago. “It’s actually two buildings ‘clubbed’ together—one has a modern glass exterior, while the other, ancient one, is made of reinforced concrete, and has small upside-down windows. We have used every inch of space available and no portion is a false shell,” architect Vishal Sharma told The Sunday Standard while explaining the most challenging project of his 15-year-old career. The Roman pillars are upside down and the corresponding inside walls slant outwards. The honeybee walls of the old-look structure give it a warm, earthy feel. The large gym spreads across the first floor and one half is in the classic structure, while the other is in the modern one. On the ground floor, the building looks like any other, with straight walls. It is on some portions of the upper floors that the walls are at an incline, and the glass-reinforced concrete windows are upside-down.
A water recycling system and natural lighting, make the clubhouse a green building. It has a gym, sauna, billiards room and reading room. The spa is in the basement, while there’s a restaurant on the ground floor. The maintenance staff can be accommodated on the higher of the two terraces of the three-and-a-half storeyed building. “The club will be opened to residents of Orange County alone. It will be ready for use before this Christmas, and we are working out the details of the membership fee structure at present,” said Sunil Totlani, Director of Meriton.