Apple BKC photos shared – and the store is stunning!

There’s been a very long wait for the first Apple Store in India, as the company worked on negotiating and meeting the government conditions for opening a single-brand store – but the Apple BKC store finally opens tomorrow.

Apple has now previewed the store ahead of its official opening, and it looks absolutely stunning …

Background

It’s been a long, hard slog for Apple to be able to open its own retail stores in India.

In a bid to boost the manufacturing sector in the country, the Indian government banned anyone from opening single-brand stores unless a high percentage of the products sold within it were made in India.

Apple has been involved in tough negotiations with the government for many years on this issue, but it’s only after it significantly increased iPhone assembly within India that it was finally granted the necessary permits.

After unveiling the colorful barricades outside the store, Apple recently confirmed that Apple BKC in Mumbai opens tomorrow. This will be almost immediately followed by Apple Saket in Delhi. Plans for the Mumbai store leaked some time ago, but the company managed to keep the lid on the Delhi one.

Apple was able to impose some of its own conditions, though on the mall company rather than the government: some 22 “competing brands” are not allowed to open stores, or even display ads, within an exclusion zone around the store.

Apple BKC store previewed by Apple

Apple shared a number of photos of its latest retail store (gallery below), together with more details about its features.

The store is powered by its own impressively sized solar panel array.

Apple BKC is designed to be one of the most energy-efficient Apple Store locations in the world, with a dedicated solar array and zero reliance on fossil fuels for store operations. The store is operationally carbon neutral, running on 100 percent renewable energy.

The most striking element of the design is a beautiful timber ceiling, which seamlessly transitions from interior to exterior – and is mirrored beneath the cantilevered upper floor.

Apple BKC features a triangular handcrafted timber ceiling that extends beyond the glass façade to the underside of the exterior canopy, reflecting the unique geometry of the store. Each tile is made from 408 pieces of timber, forming 31 modules per tile with a total of 1,000 tiles that make up the ceiling. There are over 450,000 individual timber elements, all of which were assembled in Delhi.

Upon entering the store, customers are greeted by two stone walls sourced from Rajasthan and a 14-meter-long stainless steel staircase connecting the ground level and the cantilevered mezzanine.

One of the challenges faced by Apple is that literally hundreds of languages are spoken in India, with 13 of them spoken by at least 10% of the country’s population: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Urdu, Kannada, Odia, Malayalam, Punjabi, Assamese, and English. The company says that 20 different languages are spoken across more than 100 store staff.

The store will also host a special Today at Apple series, featuring local artists:

• Music Lab: Deep Listening in Urban Spaces with Sandunes
• Photo Lab: Portraits of Resistance with Prarthna Singh
• Design Lab: Every Poster Tells a Story with Boomranng Studio
• Art Lab: Drawing Homage to Mumbai with Kohla

The store opens at 11 a.m. local time tomorrow.

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