Swara Enterprises (PR Patil), Diu Tensile Structure

A promenade works better with somewhere to stop. The brief for a seafront pavilion is to give walkers shade and rain cover and a few moments out of the weather, while keeping the whole point of the promenade — the open air and the sea view. And it has to survive a coastal environment — relentless UV, salt spray, a heavy monsoon — with the light maintenance regime that a public structure on the coast realistically gets.

Ekra Decor’s scope covered the pavilion end to end: survey, 3D structural and membrane design, fabrication of the galvanised steel and the membrane, and installation and tensioning, over about 1,886 m² in roughly 45 days.

The pavilion is an open canopy — a tensioned membrane on a light steel frame with no walls — so the form is chosen for how it reads against the sea and how it behaves in coastal wind. The fabric is form-found in 3D and pre-stressed into double curvature, which keeps it taut and stable when the wind comes off the water and drains the monsoon quickly off its slopes.

The specification is where a marine project differs. The steel is hot-dip galvanised, exposed fittings and cables are stainless, and the membrane is a PVDF- or PTFE-coated fabric selected for its resistance to UV and salt rather than the lowest cost. Ekra Decor designs the steelwork to IS 800 and takes wind and rain loads to the applicable Indian codes, with the foundations sized for the wind uplift that governs an open, exposed canopy.

The steel frame is fabricated and galvanised in the workshop and the membrane is cut and welded into finished panels off-site, so what arrives on the promenade is a set of prepared components. On site the crew casts the foundations, erects the frame, and spreads and tensions the membrane.

Working on a public seafront meant protecting the landscaping and keeping the promenade usable around the work, with the pavilion handed over as a finished, tensioned structure in about 45 days.

Diu’s promenade gained an open pavilion where people can stop in the shade without losing the sea and the breeze — built to a specification meant to last in salt air. Maintenance is limited to cleaning and a periodic check of the cables and connections.

Ekra Decor designs custom fabric structures and open tensile canopies for public and tourism projects. See more on the projects page, or read about tensile structures in Diu.