by Tara Kelton
Cross section of ACP Sandwich Panel. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, 2017
The IT material Aluminium Composite Panel consists of two thin aluminium sheets bonded to a polyethylene core. It most commonly appears in a matte grey colour, as rectangles that cover IT buildings around the city of Bangalore. The rectangles form a gridded grey interface. The material is completely opaque, like the IT buildings and the NDAs obscuring what goes on inside them.
3D Render of ACP building. Source: Archworld, 2003
It starts with IT. But it grows in popularity and now there is ACP cladding on an ATM and a maternity hospital, Sukh Sagar and the Shangrila Hotel, a store selling ACP itself. A paani puri stall, vegetable shop, D-Mart, a post office. The New Jerusalem Church and Zion Worship Center, a Manipal Hospital and Novotel, a cigarette shop and a furniture mall. The Income Tax Department, a private bungalow, hardware store, Joyalukkas jewelry, paan stall and fancy store. McDonald’s, a metro station, Mantri Square Mall, a skywalk. A Baskin Robbins, mobile repair shop, gold shop and a kathi roll stand. Pearl Academy, Lulu Mall, a dental clinic, Udupi Grand, a Radisson. iPlanet, a veterinary clinic, an aquarium, Gold’s gym, a wedding hall.
3D Render of ACP building. Source: e3facade, 2022
The material erases all culture and history in its path. It comes in numbered batches. It is cheap and easy to install, and when one panel gets dirty or scratched, you order from the same production batch and swap it out. Every building is a Ship of Theseus.
Nano-coating on aluminium composite panel. Source: aluminium-composite-panel.com
The ACP takes the shape of whatever is beneath it. Columns become grey columns, arches become grey arches, cornices become grey cornices. The curve of an art deco arch, the pillar of a colonial facade — all grey. The forms are preserved but the material has no memory. It doesn’t know it’s a column. It doesn’t know it’s an arch. It’s just grey.
Temporary ACP security booth structures
‘The Smooze’. Source: My Little Pony: The Movie, 1986
The city begins to disappear behind the panels. As the aluminium composite paneling spreads, I think about Grey Goo – a hypothetical doomsday scenario in nanotechnology where runaway, self-replicating nanobots (molecular machines) consume all organic and inorganic matter on earth to build more of themselves, turning the planet into a mass of “grey goo”.
Still from the video game ‘Doom’, id Software, 1994
I imagine a place where the material stretches in every direction. The floor is grey rectangles. The ceiling. The walls. I move through corridors of grey. There is always another corridor. There is no exit. There is no outside. Just rectangles and the sound of footsteps.
Conventional ACM composite with polyethylene core. Source: tandfonline.com
Fire Safety Considerations When Using Polystyrene in Construction. Source: shokohatlas.co
Aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire in London. Source: reuters.com, 2017
The material is also highly flammable. It kills 72 people in London when a 24-story tower block goes up in flames that rapidly climb up the building exterior – one of the UK’s worst modern disasters, leading to major inquiries and changes to safety regulations. These don’t reach Bangalore.
It is the darkest aesthetic days of the city but I am obsessed with the material. I decide I want to paint the ACP and need to get closer to the source: the grey interface of the IT facade.
EGL Tech Park, Bangalore. Source: Author’s photographs, 2018
Pictures are strictly not allowed inside the IT park. I hide an external lens inside a Matteo coffee cup. I cut out the two t’s of the ‘Matteo’ and the lens sits inside the coffee cup staring out the hole I’ve made. With this setup I can appear as if I’m looking down at my phone which I hold in one hand while holding the coffee cup in the other, tilting it towards my subject. It’s trickier than anticipated. I return with nothing usable and use Google images as source material instead.
The paintings don’t work out so well but I also make a Karnataka style boulder covered in ACP. It doesn’t sell, and sits in my car park for six years. It is the same size as a car and is covered in foam and a blue tarpaulin. The neighbours don’t like it.
Production diagram for IT Sculpture I. Source: diagram by the author, 2018
IT Sculpture I at 8-0-0 Gallery, Bangalore. Source: photograph by Upendra Vaddadi, 2025
A friend tells me she has a way to get behind the IT walls – she knows someone at an animation sweatshop. We sign NDAs in a conference room before we’re taken in.
We enter a completely dark room whose edges are impossible to find. As my eyes start to adjust I can see seas of computer monitors and ghostly faces lit up only by the light of their screens. It is 11am outside but in here it could be anytime. The windows have been completely blacked out to avoid even the slightest glare hitting a monitor.
Still from Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, Blue Sky Studios, 2006
We go into another small screening room, this time with lights. The studio owners proudly present their “showreel”. Scenes from Ice Age 2, Shrek Forever After roll by. I begin to understand why American animated movies have lost all their character – each person in the sea of faces outside is working on just one tiny contextless component, like “Scrat’s” whiskers.
Before we leave we return to the conference room. The studio owners tell us their real dream is to make their own movie, with their own script. They tell us they will start in five years, when they’ve saved enough money.
‘3D Depth Illusion Vinyl Wall Decal Sticker’. Source: amazon.in
ACP facade cleaning and maintenance worker
The interface is cleaned from left to right and top to bottom. The dirt washes down to the ground along its surface. The cleaners press their palms against the panels to identify the type of dirt and the mechanism they will use to clean it. The tools are ropes, catchers, poles, blades, chemicals (R2, R3), soap oil, buckets, scrubbers and screws. Using the ropes they move along the surface, propping themselves against it with the tips of their feet. They hang in the air for 3-4 hours. Their thighs and lower backs hurt but they continue. The oldest, cracked panels sometimes cut their hands. The matter along the surface includes cement, paint, mud, bird droppings, dust, silicone and water marks. They wet the ACP, apply the chemical, mop, scrub and squeeze. They rub at the water marks over and over. The marks seem to disappear but then they return.
‘Lumon Industries’ building from Severance, Apple TV+, 2025
My friend Qusai and I are teaching a “wayfinding” class together at a design school. I suggest for our field trip that we break into an IT park together. He suggests surrealist games in the park. I suggest a structure for the day – play them until we get thrown out.
We find a good way in. You can rent a Hilton hotel room inside the park for four hours – we use our entire class budget to pay for it. We just have to figure out how to sneak 17 students into one room.
Hotel interior, Manyata Tech Park. Source: Author’s photograph, 2023
My friend Qusai and I are teaching a “wayfinding” class together at a design school. I suggest for our field trip that we break into an IT park together. He suggests surrealist games in the park. I suggest a structure for the day – play them until we get thrown out.
We find a good way in. You can rent a Hilton hotel room inside the park for four hours – we use our entire class budget to pay for it. We just have to figure out how to sneak 17 students into one room.
Class activity, Manyata Tech Park. Source: Author’s photograph, 2023
We head out into the park in groups of three, past variously-shaped grey buildings. Qusai leads the group in forming a giant spiral that snakes around the plaza by the food court. A security guard immediately arrives to shut it down. We attempt some “social hacking”. Qusai tries reasoning with him, asks him if he thinks fun should be allowed inside an IT park. He pauses and seems to really reflect on the question. Then: ‘fun is not allowed’. He agrees to take us to his supervisor to present our arguments. At the ACP-clad security booth, where his supervisor is sitting, I warmly compliment his tie. He lets us stay, after making a few arbitrary conditions. We leave and once out of eyeshot, don’t really follow them.
In the next exercise students pair up to become a camera. One student has a paper bag over their head while the other positions them towards a ‘composition’ of interest. When they remove the bag, the student sees the image: they take a photo with their eyes.
We pass an SEZ office. I see Qusai pointing a student with a bag over their head towards the Target logo on an exterior wall.
We don’t really get thrown out. Only threatened and moved from area to area, jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Special Economic Zone (SEZ), Manyata Tech Park. Source: Author’s photograph, 2023
To get inside an IT building, you must pass the high wall, the hedges, the sidewalk, the palm tree, the surveillance cameras, the security guards, the paved streets and then finally the ACP.
To get inside Infosys, you must befriend the Italian Consul General. When the Italian artists-in-residence arrive, he organizes an official visit, behind the pearly gates.
Infosys Crescent. Source: Author’s photographs, 2025
Infosys Crescent. Source: Author’s photographs, 2025
We get to the Infosys entrance early. They sign us in one by one, scan our bags and our persons, enter our names into a book and hand us our official passes. It’s really happening.
We file into a conference room with a V-shaped desk. I sit at the end of the V. The consul general is late – he finally arrives with two ladies in saris and three men in suits (Infosys employees). The men file in after him and take seats. I try to give up my seat at the head of the V but the consul declines. I feel uncomfortable but stay put, it is a good recording location. An assistant dims the lights and then two side-by-side TVs both begin playing the Infosys corporate infomercial. “In 1987, Digital Equipment Corporation came on board … during the early days, software was sent abroad by courier.” I dim my phone screen all the way down and start recording. “True to its values, Infosys shared wealth with its employees.”
Infosys Crescent conference room. Source: Author’s photographs, 2025
Infosys napkin. Source: Author’s photographs, 2025
I am not sure if the Consul General is frowning at me or not as I ask for the business card of the third employee we’ve been introduced to. (I’m hoping to pitch the infrastructure manager Mr. [redacted] my boulder). Next we take a golf cart around the manicured park – the Italians seem to relax and breathe a sigh of relief in this cleaner environment. We stop at the famous pyramid to take a group photo.
Infosys Pyramid. Source: Author’s photographs, 2025
We go to another building and are taken into the ‘energy center’ filled with curved monitors, a giant presentation screen and matching office chairs. A corporate triptych of forests with lakes forming the shape of a three-arrowed recycle logo hangs beside us on one wall.
I can’t believe that I’m finally inside the heart of the beast, fully sanctioned. But then I realize I am no closer – we are being given the formal pitch. The whole visit is opaque, everyone has their official hat on and there is this feeling like everyone is performing a narrative and script for us, nothing is showing between the cracks no matter what questions we ask.
Mara is spinning around in her office chair, looking bored. I am worried we aren’t being serious enough and sit up straight in my chair and smile at the presenter.
It is unclear why but an employee begins a presentation on their climate initiatives. Perhaps the presence of the consul. He zooms into the interface and we see the climate data of the pyramid in real time. ‘Have the goalposts shifted with the arrival of AI and data centers?’ He looks uncomfortable and doesn’t really answer.
Infosys employee badge. Source: Author’s photographs, 2025
As we walk towards the exit, I ask the infrastructure manager about whether birds hit their building glass*. “Every day. We looked into it but there’s nothing we can do. There’s no sparrows anymore though, because of cell phone towers”.
*up to a billion birds die every year hitting office buildings in the US. The number in India is unknown.
“bird striking glass window”, stock image
About the Author
This issue of Purée Mag was made possible through the support of the Generator Cooperative Art Production, 2025-26.