Designed by Meenakshi Sharma and her team at Vestian, this ambitious R&D hub blends engineering precision with agile workplace design to foster collaboration and speed.
Located in the plush locality of Bengaluru’s Brigade Tech Garden, an ambitious new R&D hub demonstrates how design can drive innovation, collaboration, and engineering precision under one roof. Spanning 2.55 lakh sq. ft. across five floors of the C5 Tower, this workplace reimagines the culture of a German automotive giant by uniting five previously dispersed teams within a single, highperformance environment.
Designed and excuted by Meenakshi Sharma, Principal Designer, Vestian and her team consisting of Harshitha Vashishth, Meghana Reddy, Sri Vishnu Vardhan, Unmesh T. J., Rakshitha Mohan, Chithra, and Varun Kaveetil.
Vestian was appointed to deliver a 2.55 lakh sq ft fit out across the first to fifth floors within 120 days, while the landlord’s base build works were still in progress. The shell, a LEED‑Platinum SEZ block, offered deep floor plates, generous floor‑to‑floor heights, and a glazed North‑South façade—yet came with the logistical tangle of installing a full-scale indoor car-test bay and working to a lean interiors budget. “Early design explorations leaned toward a motorsport-inspired narrative. Concepts such as grandstand-like step seating around the atrium, tyre-mark graphics sweeping across the floors, and rear-view mirror claddings in pantries were envisioned. While budget and time compressed the scope, the essence of that vision—termed the Gear Up Garage—remains. The first-floor car-display and test bay, lighting rings tracing circulation paths, and colour-blocked neighbourhood cores preserve the energy and dynamism of the original concept while aligning with everyday workflows.”
Visitors encounter the brand’s DNA the moment they step in. A precision-cut aperture in the glazed façade introduces a new vehicular ramp, allowing cars to be driven directly from grade level into the firstfloor reception and the test bay. Around this dramatic entry point, a compact figure-ofeight layout accommodates labs, wellness rooms, and breakout zones, ensuring engineers can transition seamlessly from laptops to lift jacks.
The second floor is anchored by a 942-seat cafeteria that doubles as an all-hands meeting venue. Lightweight furniture, retractable AV, and modular planning allow this space to transform from a buzzing lunch hall into a corporate briefing zone within minutes. Above, three uniform work floors—each accommodating between 323 and 454 workstations—are designed for agility. Amphitheatres, phone booths, and writable ‘scrum alleys’ punctuate the open office, ensuring that no workstation is more than thirty paces away from a collaborative node.
A soaring eight-storey atrium slices through the heart of the building, flooding deep floor plates with daylight. Its radial geometry is echoed in curved gypsum forms and custom pendant lighting rings, reinforcing a subtle sense of motion throughout the interiors. The community spaces cluster around this luminous void, making it both the symbolic and functional core of the workplace.
With exposed ceilings treated in acoustic spray, PET-fibre baffles in brand colours doubling as way finding devices, and chilledwater AHUs supporting open offices, the workplace balances industrial rawness with high-performance comfort. Mission-critical spaces are served by VRV units linked to the Building Management System, ensuring precise control. Automatic CO₂ sensors inject fresh air during high-intensity sprint cycles, prioritising wellbeing and efficiency.
Sustainability was embedded in every layer of the build. Water-based paints, low-VOC adhesives, and carpet tiles with recycled content kept finishes aligned with Vestian’s in-house LEED Gold specifications, complementing the LEED-Platinum shell without pursuing additional certification.
Executing the project demanded as much engineering precision as the automotive work it supports. The kitchen’s wet core had to be rerouted around the test bay’s transfer girders. Curved luminaires were prototyped concurrently with drywall construction. The most daring manoeuvre—slicing through the building façade to insert the vehicular ramp—was executed even as MEP services were being installed on the upper floors. Despite these complexities, the project crossed the finish line on day 118, two days ahead of the target, without a single unscheduled night shift.
Six months after handover, HR surveys indicate sharper cross-team collaboration, faster sprint cycles—credited largely to writable corridors and agile scrum spaces— and a new vibrancy around amphitheatrestyle town halls. By embedding engineering precision into the very DNA of the workplace, the hub has become more than a physical space: it is a catalyst for innovation, a stage for collaboration, and a subtle but purposeful expression of the brand’s ethos.
