Retail

CaratLane, Anna Nagar

A 640 sqft mall unit with 2.6m clear height, no service access after 10pm, and a national brand standard that assumed more ceiling than the shell had.

640
Sqft
11
Weeks shell to trading
2.6
Metres clear height
140
Millimetres recovered
00
Days late

01 · The shell we were given

Everything the brand standard needed was 140mm taller than the box.

The unit was handed over at 2.6m slab soffit with a sprinkler main and two duct runs already crossing the space on the diagonal. The national standard assumed a flat ceiling plane at 2.75m with track below it, and vitrine case tops set to a fixed sightline from that plane.

Mall rules allowed material movement and noisy work only between 10pm and 7am. That meant the ceiling decision could not be revisited on site: whatever was drawn had to be buildable in night shifts, first time, with no reworked bulkheads.

CaratLane, Anna Nagar, bare shell at handover

Fig. 01 · Week 0, as handed over

02 · What we did not build

What we did not build

Four ceiling schemes were drawn against the same section. Three were rejected before a single fixing went in.

01 · Rejected
Exposed truss
Cheapest of the four and it rendered best. Every sprinkler head would have been visible from the shopfront, and every service call would have needed a tower in the middle of trading hours.
02 · Rejected
Flush gypsum raft
Clean, and it hid everything. It also added 140mm of build-up, which pushed the case tops below the sightline the brand standard sets. The standard would have been broken on day one.
03 · Rejected
Timber baffles
The client liked this one. We did not: baffles at 40mm centres throw striped shadow across the vitrines, and jewellery retail lives or dies on even light on the glass.
04 · Built
Perimeter raft, open centre
Services concealed at the perimeter where the drops already ran, centre left open at full slab height, track carried on the raft edge. The case tops held their sightline and the standard was met without a variation.