India's first Eye.Designed for Amaravati.
A proposed landmark observation wheel destination shaped around panoramic capsules, a sculptural twin-pylon identity and a public waterfront experience for India's new capital city.
- Position
- India's first Eye
- Experience
- Panoramic capsules
- Setting
- Waterfront destination
Concept visualization
A destination designed at every scale.
The Eye is conceived as one coordinated experience. Structure, capsules, arrival, landscape and night lighting share one architectural language while remaining subject to detailed site, engineering and authority studies.
Concept visualizationCapsule engineering
Level-riding panoramic capsules combine curved low-iron glass, accessible circulation and discreet mechanical connections.
Concept visualizationStructural identity
Twin tapering pylons frame the hub and give the wheel a silhouette that belongs to Amaravati rather than a generic attraction.
Concept visualizationArrival and boarding
A shaded waterfront pavilion turns boarding into a clear, accessible sequence connected to landscape and public life.
Concept visualizationPanoramic interior
Warm, low-glare interiors provide uninterrupted city and river views with space planned for visitors of every ability.
A landmark wheel is judged by four different audiences at once.
It is read as architecture, procured as infrastructure, financed as a commercial asset and operated as a passenger transport system. Each reading imposes constraints the others do not, and they are resolved together or not at all.
- 01
Iconic
It has to be worth building. The silhouette is read from kilometres away, long before anyone buys a ticket.
- 02
Safe
It carries passengers continuously, in the open air, and an independent body has to accept the evidence that it is safe before it opens.
- 03
Buildable
Every component has to be fabricated, transported to site and raised through a sequence of temporary structural states.
- 04
Commercially credible
Throughput, availability and operating cost decide whether the asset works. All three are fixed by engineering decisions.
- 05
Accessible
Boarding, circulation and evacuation have to work for every visitor, not for an average one.
- 06
Locally integrated
It has to be fabricated, erected and maintained by a supply chain that can actually reach the site.
- 07
Maintainable
The inspection regime the operator lives with for thirty years is set during design, whether or not anyone plans it.
One engineering thread, from first feasibility question to year thirty.
The stages are sequential, but the decisions are not. What is settled in feasibility determines what is possible at commissioning, and what is designed in year one sets the maintenance regime for the life of the asset.
Feasibility and business case
Establishing whether a wheel of a given size can be built on a given site, and what it would take.
A landmark wheel is usually proposed before anyone knows whether the site can carry it. Height is chosen for ambition, not for ground conditions, wind exposure, access or the width of the road that a 60-metre rim section has to travel down. Decisions taken in this period are the most expensive ones on the project, and they are taken with the least information.
- Structural
- Geotechnical
- Wind
- Logistics
- Operations planning
Concept and experience design
Resolving how the wheel is read from the city, and how a visitor moves through it.
A wheel is experienced twice: as a silhouette on the skyline from several kilometres away, and as a twenty-minute journey inside a cabin. These two readings pull in opposite directions. Structural depth that reads as elegant from a distance can obstruct the view from inside it.
- Experience design
- Structural
- Lighting
- Accessibility
- Operations
Engineering and systems
The structural, mechanical, electrical and control engineering that makes the wheel work.
A giant observation wheel is a rotating structure carrying passengers continuously, for decades, in the open air. It combines a tension-spoke structure, a slow-speed drive system, a cabin stabilisation mechanism and a safety-related control system. Each is demanding on its own. The difficulty is that they have to be engineered together, because every one of them changes the loads on the others.
- Structural
- Mechanical
- Electrical
- Control systems
- Functional safety
- Fatigue and dynamics
Procurement and local manufacturing integration
Turning a design into fabricable packages, and qualifying who fabricates them.
A wheel is not bought as a product. It is fabricated as several thousand tonnes of steel across multiple suppliers, to tolerances that only matter when the pieces meet on site. Local content requirements make this harder, not easier: qualifying a regional fabricator takes engineering effort long before the first plate is cut.
- Materials and welding
- Quality engineering
- Supply chain
- Structural detailing
Erection and site integration
The engineering of how the wheel is assembled and raised.
Erection is where a wheel project is most often lost. A structure designed for its finished, tensioned condition passes through a series of temporary states that can load it in entirely different directions. The half-built wheel is a different structure from the finished one, and it has to be engineered as such.
- Construction engineering
- Temporary works
- Heavy lift
- Survey
- Site safety
Testing, certification and commissioning
Demonstrating, to an independent party, that the wheel is safe to carry passengers.
A wheel does not open because it is finished. It opens because an independent body accepts the evidence that it is safe. That evidence has to be planned from the beginning of design — a test that nobody designed for is a test that cannot be passed late in the programme.
- Certification
- Functional safety
- Commissioning
- Quality assurance
- Operations
Operations readiness and lifecycle services
Keeping the wheel safe, available and economic for the decades after it opens.
A wheel earns its return over thirty years, not on opening day. Availability is a commercial number: a wheel that is closed is a wheel that is not selling tickets. The maintenance regime, the spares strategy and the inspection intervals are set during design, whether or not anyone thinks about them then.
- Reliability
- Asset management
- Structural inspection
- Operations engineering
Concept visualisation — not a depiction of a built project
Ain Dubai
A 250-metre observation wheel on a reclaimed island, delivered by a contracting group in which Starneth Engineering held the design and construction contractor role alongside Hyundai Engineering & Construction.
- Height
- 250 m
- Capsules
- 48
- Opened
- 21 October 2021
- Site
- Reclaimed island
- Contracting entity
- Starneth Engineering
- Partners
- Hyundai Engineering & Construction — Design and construction contractor · KCI — Engineered the complete wheel structure, including installation engineering
Six cities. Six identities. One national platform.
Starneth India is developing a repeatable platform for landmark observation-wheel destinations, with each city project structured independently and designed around its local culture, landscape and visitor economy.
Concept directions. No city project is awarded, contracted, financed or approved, and the corporate structure is a proposal subject to tender, legal, tax and regulatory review.
Engineering practice, built for Indian delivery.
Landmark wheels in India are procured through long-concession structures and built through regional supply chains. Both are workable. Both need the technical envelope defined before the commercial one.
Our India practice exists to close the gap between an ambition set in a masterplan and a structure that can actually be fabricated, erected, certified and operated here. That means engaging with the site before the height is fixed, and with the supply chain before the tender is issued.
It also means being precise about who does what. On a wheel at landmark scale, structural design, installation engineering, fabrication and construction execution are usually held by different parties. Naming those boundaries early is the single most effective risk control available to a client.
- Site before heightGround, wind and access decide what diameter is real.
- Packages before tendersFabrication scope written to match supplier capability.
- Interfaces namedEvery boundary assigned before it becomes a dispute.
- Evidence planned earlyCertification designed for, not discovered late.
Load has to reach the ground, and evidence has to reach an assessor.
Two things govern a wheel project. The structural load path, which is a physical fact, and the assurance path, which is a documentary one. Both are designed.
The structural path
Passenger load enters at the cabin and leaves at the foundation. Everything between — rim, spoke, hub, spindle, support leg — is a member in that chain, sized by a case that is usually fatigue rather than peak load, because the structure cycles every operating day for decades.
The assurance path
A wheel opens when an independent body accepts the evidence that it is safe. That evidence is assembled from design calculations, fabrication records, erection verification, functional testing and trial operation. A test nobody designed for is a test that cannot be passed late in the programme, so the certification route is planned during design.
Commercial possibilities
A wheel can carry hospitality, private cabins, events, retail and sponsorship, and anchor a public realm that works when the wheel is closed. These are design decisions with structural consequences, best taken early. What they will return is a matter for the client’s own business case, not ours.
Engineering notes
- EngineeringWhat actually makes a giant observation wheel difficultThe hard part is not the size. It is that four demanding engineering problems have to be solved as one, because each of them changes the answers to the others.7 min
- India marketProcurement readiness for landmark attraction projectsIndian PPP structures are well suited to landmark attractions, provided the technical envelope is defined before the commercial one. Where that order is reversed, the tender is usually re-called.6 min