TERNS is not just a building, but an urban edge and an experience – where bold roof forms, transparent spaces, and water-led courts dissolve the line between inside and outside, creating a seamless setting for gathering, movement, and pause.

Located in Coimbatore Civil Aerodrome Post, the site sits at a transition point between the city’s developing urban edge and its quieter semi-rural surroundings. Low-rise neighborhoods, industrial pockets, and open fields physically frame it. Culturally, the area balances growing commercial activity with a familiar culture of outdoor gathering, social dining.

Urban Edge in Coimbatore Transforms an Empty Plot into a Restobar Destination | K Square Architects

Client’s brief

The client, engaged in multiple industries including construction and textiles, approached the project with a clear brief: to transform an empty, undeveloped plot into a urban edge that could welcome a wide spectrum of users – from family visitors to social gatherings and party crowds. Alongside the hospitality program, he envisioned the addition of compact hotel blocks to accommodate guests who wish to stay on-site.

Because the client leases the land, the client emphasized that all structures must be temporary, removable, and reusable. This led to the decision to build primarily with steel and glass, enabling faster execution, future adaptability, and the freedom to explore a more dynamic architectural language than a conventional permanent build. Designers created the result as a framework for flexibility—an identity that can evolve, relocate, or grow with changing needs.

Design Response

Because the client leases the land, the client required the team to design, construct, and make the project operational within 12–15 months. Opting for a steel structural system enabled rapid fabrication, on-site assembly, and early occupation—making the timeline achievable without compromising design intent.

Dynamic Structure & Structural Expression

A defining requirement was to create a dynamic architectural character, highlighted by large, tilted roof planes extending in multiple directions. Conventional edge-supported columns diminished the cantilevered effect, so the design developed a system of V-columns originating from the central floor and branching outward to support the roof.

Once the interior is furnished and occupied, these supports visually recede, allowing the roof to read as a floating plane. In the indoor dining zone, the designers shifted the primary supports to the perimeter and wrapped them in glass, further concealing their presence and reinforcing the floating roof expression.

Rules and Regulations

Rules required a large portion of the site at the perimeter to be remaining open to the sky, limiting construction. This area was reinterpreted as a landscape spine with water bodies, planting, and stepped outdoor dining pockets. What began as a restriction became one the key spatial feature, creating a buffer from the surroundings and giving the project a sense of being enclosed in its own landscape.

Central Courtyard

Given the site’s location amid low-rise residential and commercial plots with constant movement around it, the design turns inward to create a sense of detachment. A central courtyard with a 23-foot free-standing water cascade and linear water body becomes the core, splitting the built mass into two wings on either side. Both indoor and semi-indoor dining spaces face this courtyard, while the water body extends into the setback as a landscaped spine, reinforcing the buffer from the surroundings.

Multi-Level Dining & Floating Bridge Deck

To enhance engagement with the water, the courtyard incorporates tiered floor levels with dining pockets at different elevations. A floating bridge deck spans above the central pool, accessed by a spiral staircase, offering elevated views of the cascade and layered user movement. This creates one of the project’s signature experiences—visitors encounter people circulating vertically, making the space feel active and animated from entry.

Roof Geometry

The roof is split into three tilted planes: two rise from 12 feet at the setback edge to 25 feet toward the courtyard, framing views into the central space, while the third tilts toward the landscaped setback near the parking zone and it was divided by glass façade and a lush landscape infront of the glass to avoid visual of vehicular movement. This strategy directs visual focus inward, enhances openness, and shapes the project’s dynamic silhouette.

Lighting & Interior Installations

With the glass panels defining the enclosure, the interiors are animated through suspended installations and focused lighting. Q3 pendant lights frame the bar and dining zone as a visual anchor, while an aluminum partition with miniature bird figurines faces the courtyard, adding a crafted layer of detail.

In the semi-outdoor area, a red ribbon-like metal installation etched with a cityscape introduces movement and color overhead. At the café core, clustered paper lanterns soften the atmosphere, balancing the structural expression with a warmer, more tactile character.

Design Techniques & Material Choices

With the primary skin built as a metal framework, the material palette was selected to balance its structural clarity with a nature-led atmosphere. The project combines Timber finish ceilings, concrete textures, granite flooring, corten steel accents, rubble stone cladding, and large contemporary glass panels, complementing greenery, water elements, and the overall tropical intent—so that the space feels warm, tactile, and closely connected to its tropical context.

Conclusion

TERNs contributes to its surroundings by creating an inward-facing environment that buffers noise and improves the on-site microclimate. It also reduces permanent impact using a removable steel-and-glass structural system and carefully designed landscape and water features. This urban edge serves the community as a shared space for diverse users – families, travelers, and social groups – becoming a public leisure node rather than merely a commercial venue. Its lasting legacy lies in showing how a temporary structure can create place, identity, and atmosphere. It proves that meaningful architectural impact depends on experience, not on permanence.

Fact File

Designed by: K Square Architects

Project Type: Restaurant/Bar/Cafe

Project Name: TERNS

Location: Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu

Year Built: 2025

Project Size: 35000 Sq.ft

Principal Architects: Ar. Krishna Kishore & Ar. Karthik Hariharan

Team Design Credits: Ar. Abubakkar Sithik & Solai Karthik

Photograph Courtesy: PHX INDIA

Firm’s Website Link: K Square Architects

The Firm’s Instagram Link: K Square Architects

Firm’s Facebook Link: K Square Architects

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