Shop Fronts and Office Glass in Connaught Place, Delhi

Connaught Place, the Georgian-style ring of colonnaded blocks in the heart of New Delhi, is laid out as an Inner Circle and an Outer Circle joined by radial roads, with blocks lettered A to N. Rajiv Chowk station, where the Blue and Yellow Lines meet, sits beneath the central park, and Janpath, Barakhamba Road and Kasturba Gandhi Marg run out from the circles with their office towers. Ground floors are showrooms, restaurants and banks; the floors above are offices, many in buildings that have stood for decades.

Working under the NDMC

Connaught Place falls under the New Delhi Municipal Council rather than the MCD. The NDMC enforces Delhi's outdoor advertising policy in CP and has repeatedly asked traders to bring signage into line; for example, a sign is not supposed to extend beyond the width of the shop. The colonnade's look is treated as a shared asset, so a new frontage is expected to sit inside the arch rather than spill out of it. Before you approve a design, check with your landlord and the NDMC on what is allowed for your block. We design to fit the opening and avoid anything that projects into the corridor.

Shop fronts inside the colonnade

Most CP shop fronts sit back under the colonnade, so the glass is shaded and the arch frames the display. A toughened glass shop front with door in 12mm Saint-Gobain toughened glass starts at ₹500 per sq ft. Behind it, a rolling shutter secures the shop; in older units, the original shutter box is often reused if it is sound. Old openings are rarely square, so each panel is made to measured sizes.

When the work can happen

The corridors are crowded from late morning into the night. Large panels are best delivered and fitted early in the morning or after closing, and any work that blocks the corridor needs the shortest possible window. We plan delivery around this at the site visit.

Offices upstairs and on the radial roads

Upper floors in the blocks are often older offices: law firms, chartered accountants, travel agents and consultancies, many in spaces with high ceilings and uneven floors. A frameless glass office partition with door from ₹400 per sq ft brightens a deep floor; where the floor or ceiling is out of level, the aluminium profile partition from ₹1,100 per sq ft absorbs the difference. Old windows can give way to aluminium sliding windows, if the building allows.

Repairs that cannot wait

A CP showroom or restaurant door opens all day, and a failed floor spring leaves it swinging or stuck open. A glass door floor machine repair is quoted from a short video on WhatsApp, without a paid visit. For a slamming door, see shopfront door slamming.

For other central and south Delhi areas, see Lajpat Nagar and Defence Colony. Read showrooms in Delhi and glass office partitions in Delhi, then book a site visit for your block.