World One, World Crest Towers at Lodha Place -- Upper Worli, Mumbai, India

World One (Lodha Place).jpg
Artist Rendering of World One

Project: World One, World Crest Towers at Lodha Place
Location: Upper Worli, Mumbai, India
Client: Lodha Group
Consultant: Langan Engineering and Environmental Services

Cities have typically been marked by iconic structures to symbolize economic progress and Mumbai, the commercial capital of India is no different. World One is the iconic masterpiece of a three residential tower, shopping mall and office building development at the site of the old Srinivas Cotton Mills factory located in Upper Worli, Mumbai. At 442 m and 117 storeys, World One is destined to become the second tallest residential building in the world, a mere 70 m short of Pentominium Tower in Dubai, slated to be completed in 2013, one year ahead of World One. However, the final height and number of floors will not be made public until closer to the completion of the tower. One of the landmark features of the tower will be the open-to-air observatory ‘1000’ located, at 1000 feet above sea level.

The tower has been designed by the world famous architectural practice Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and the consulting engineering firm Leslie E. Robertson was responsible for providing structural engineering design services. Due to its “green” environmental credentials, it will be rated as a Gold LEED Certified building by the Green Building Council.

Some interesting facts about living at 450 m above sea level:
   Air temperature at the top of World One will be 4.5oC lower than at the ground.
   Street noise levels can be reduced by nearly 100%.
   The outside air will be cleaner, fresher and with better visibility due to a decrease in airborne pollutants usually associated with automotive sources.

World Crest (Lodha Place).jpg
Rendering of World Crest World Crest tower, at 57 storeys is the smallest of the three iconic residential towers at Lodha Place. It may be dwarfed by World One but is itself a contemporary structure that stands in a league of its own. The finest names in design and architecture have come together to lend their expertise to the creation of this tower. Though the expertise of Fugro Loadtest in pile foundation testing is seldom acknowledged by the public, our input provides confidence to those that build upon them. See over page for the critical involvement of Fugro Loadtest.

The trial piles were instrumented with 7 no. levels of strain gauges over the lowest 10 m of pile to follow the design length of the rock socket. Two 405 mm O-cells with a combined rated test mobilization capacity of 25.2 MN were adopted. The Tuff was much stronger than the design team expected and even over-pressurizing the O-cells beyond their rated capacity to provide a bi-directional test load of 38 MN, O-cell expansion of less than 10 mm was recorded.
The strain gauge instrumentation indicated that the O-cell applied load was resisted by shaft friction forces only with no load transferred to end bearing. Strain gauge recorded data suggested the mobilized unit skin friction reached as high as 1500 kPa.

For the World Crest Tower, the design of the foundation piles followed that of the World One Tower in close proximity as the geological ground condition was similar. Fugro Loadtest was engaged to carry out two verification tests on piles also to be included as production piles in the structure foundation. Since both the test piles were intended to carry structural loading, the O-cells and annular void created as a result of the expansion of the O-cell were grouted to reinstate the structural integrity.

The involvement of Fugro Loadtest was initially on the World One Tower where two preliminary 1200 mm diameter piles were tested in advance of the construction of the production piles. Both test piles at near 27 m in length were relatively short for the foundations of such a tall building. However, the geological formation at the site was weathered but very competent Tuff bedrock.

World One, World Crest Towers at Lodha Place -- Upper Worli, Mumbai, India

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