Manesar Car Parking Tensile Structure

An industrial facility in Manesar needed covered parking at its entrance — a block of bays for staff and visitor vehicles that were otherwise fully exposed to Haryana’s climate. The requirement for a project like this is usually straightforward: cover as many bays as the frontage allows, keep the structure clear of the parking and the circulation, and get it built without interrupting the site.

Ekra Decor delivered it as a turnkey package. One team carried out the measured site survey, the structural and membrane design in 3D, the fabrication of the galvanised steel frame and the high-frequency-welded membrane panels, and the on-site erection, connection and tensioning. A car-park tensile canopy is a well-defined structure type for the company — an architectural fabric stretched taut over a steel frame, shaped to shed rain, hold its form under wind and stay serviceable for years with very little upkeep.

A car-park canopy has to solve two requirements that pull against each other: it must span far enough to be useful, and it must leave the space beneath it completely open. The layout here answers that with a cantilever — the roof is carried on one row of raking steel columns set to the side of the bays, and the steel and membrane reach out over the parking and the drive lane with no second line of props.

The membrane is form-found in three dimensions. A flat fabric roof would flap and pond water; a tensile roof is pre-stressed into a double-curved shape so it stays taut under wind uplift and drains to defined low points. For a canopy in this part of Haryana that means designing for the gusty pre-monsoon winds alongside the rain load, with the steel checked to IS 800 and wind and seismic actions taken to the applicable Indian standards. Because the roof itself is so light, the governing case for the foundations is uplift and overturning rather than gravity, and the footings are sized on that basis.

Most of the work happens away from the site. The steel is cut, welded and hot-dip galvanised in the workshop; the membrane is cut to the form-found pattern and high-frequency welded into panels; the foundations are cast at the facility while that is under way. On-site work is then limited to standing the frame, hanging the panels and tensioning the membrane to its design stress.

That sequence matters on an estate like IMT Manesar, where the entrance and the yard stay in use throughout. Deliveries and the crane lift are planned around vehicle movement, the work zone is fenced off, and the canopy is handed over as a finished structure — steel, membrane, edge clamps and rainwater details all complete.

The facility gained a run of covered, column-free parking at its entrance. Vehicles are out of the direct sun and the monsoon, the bays and the drive lane are unobstructed, and the structure was added to a working site without closing it. Upkeep is minimal: a periodic wash of the membrane and an annual check of cable tension and bolt torque is effectively all a canopy of this kind needs.

Ekra Decor’s archive holds several other installations across the Manesar industrial belt, reflecting a long working presence in the Gurugram–Manesar corridor. If you are planning covered parking for a plant, office or campus in the region, the car-parking tensile shades page sets out the options, or you can see more finished work on the projects page.

See more finished work on the projects page, or read about tensile structures in Manesar.