Being social by The Busride Design Studio + The BusrideLAB

BEING

Concept sketch : The Dirty Old Man for Social

The brand experience for Social was designed around the idea of Rebellion. In our first few meetings with the core team at Impresario, and with boss-man Riyaaz Amlani, the idea was to create a space that had the flexibility and timelessness of a Coffee house, with the attitude of a Bar. Social was, quite literally, a place designed to force interaction, and every design decision aimed to create that singular experience.

We were given the first site for this exciting new brand, to be conceived as the next generation space after the success of Mocha. The idea was to build on the strengths and community aspects of Mocha, yet completely rethink the guest experience. While Mocha channeled the Turkish Kahwah-khaanas, Social would be quite literally, Anti Everything.

Anti-Design Anti-Brand Anti-Glamour Anti-Slick Anti-Refinement Anti-Gloss Anti-Fuss Anti-Mall Anti-Everything

Our first few layouts explored the idea of meaningful adjacencies, with clustered seating around dense formations, and an integrated splitlevel staircase that stitched up both floors. These were eventually discarded as being too fussy.

Explorations around creating a Social bar experience.

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

For Exhaust & Fresh Air

1'-5"

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334" 1 2'-02"

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KITCHEN

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CRATE WOOD SEATING MODULE

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PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

IER CASH

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Our final selected layouts reflected the heart of the Social concept, the signature oversized communal table that cut through the centre of the layout, proclaiming itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s place of pride. The idea was to encourage this seating as a way to be more social. PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

The idea for the fitout was to create as little design as possible, for future improvisations with spray-paint and surface graffiti.

Formats like these rotated brick patterns were created as provocations for Daku, to enable a fun collaboration between space and surface graphics.

Local hardware markets and junk stores supplied strange design requirements, like the industrial hooks meant for handbags.

Socialâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tight budgets made us to scour local markets to repurpose found objects, that sort of defined the end product through a strange process.

Slab cutouts, while compromising usable floor-space, created desirable â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Socialâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; formats with line-of-sight taking precedence over maximising revenue area.

The staircase pallet-stack allowed for a central merchandise storage unit, and create a central navigational experience.

The Church Street Social

The Church Street Social was our first foray into the rebellious world of this exciting brand. The idea was to articulate a fun, divergent mind space, a sense of humour, and quirky brash outlook that could live beyond a single location. The resonance with the work community came on the back of a simple insight, the new community of practitioners needed a third place, apart from work and home, to call their own. Social then became different things for different people, a work-hub, a gig-venue, a place to customise and feel comfortable at, without being made to feel self-conscious as a freelancer.

Since the first Social, the brand has taken on a life of itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own. With some incredible talents interpreting the brand, Social has moved into most subcultures, becoming a face for the B-boying, homegrown skateboarding culture, street art and affiliated urban movements in all the cities it occupies.

Image : www.insider.in

The Khar Social, Sameep Padora +Associates

Image : www.insider.in

The Todi Mill Social, Studio 8:23

Image : www.insider.in

The Colaba Social, IEHPL Team + Sanya Narang

Image : www.insider.in

The Koramangala Social, Studio 8:23

ON ANTICAPITALISM

"Located at the Capital Building in BKC, a business and commercial district in Mumbai, Capital Social’s interiors are a nod to Communists propaganda during the Cold War era, a departure from its texture and local grunge compositions found in the previous 10 outlets.” We were very conscious of the location of the space. BKC represents the face of global capitalist architecture, and is a perfect example of the ‘placelessness’ of the modern architecture paradigm, where structures are put up pretty much devoid of context and location. ‘We felt it’d be interesting to start a conversation around the other extreme, the Brutalist movements of the 50s, and the communal canteens of the Cold War era, as a fun contrast to all metals and glass greyness around,”

we are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. we are here to drink beer. we are here to kill war. we are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that death will tremble to take us. charles bukowski

god has given us the capital building. we must construct an entity within it that showcases its godforsakeness. brutale like the unforgiving concrete. brutale like the shadows that kiss it. brutale like the rust that adorns the metal. brutale like you. brutale like me. capital social.

The Capital Social, BKC

ON ANTI-MALL

At the Oberoi mall, where one is surrounded by the sanitised and clinical generic mall environment, very much like any other location for our malls today, we chose to create a sharp contrast for the Retail environment. The Social at Oberoi mall turns its back to the Mall with an opaque facade, filled with high-fashion parody window displays, concealing a dark, Bombay-Gothic design language in the interiors. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We felt it would be interesting to create a huge contrast, and use the cavernous volume we were given to full effect, to create a vertical Gothic volume that references the age-old beauty of architecture in Bombay, and place it smack in the middle of the faceless mall context we were provided with.â&#x20AC;?

The Goregaon Social, Oberoi Mall

The Goregaon Social Facade, Oberoi Mall