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| Aerial View |
ENVIRONMENT FOR ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION
Designing an environment for architectural education, leads to questioning the linear understanding of mono-valent space. Mono-valent architectural spaces create rigid environments, built block vis-a-vis open space.
A campus for architecture requires spaces that can stimulate the mind, places that rather than evoking an end, become part of a process making them multi-valent. A subtle diffused sequence of open and built spaces formed out of an operation of skewing and expanding is used to attain non-linear spaces.
Spaces by virtue of their use and movement patterns can overlap increasing overlaps of users, facilitating the chance meetings of the different specialized disciplines – on a whole becoming a platform of synthesis towards a greater generalized understanding of the entire paradigm of design.
A departure from historicity frees the mind of memory. Architectural language superimposes on the mind-memory (ironically at times learned-memory rather than acquired-memory). A design environment should free itself of styles, languages; a spirit of freedom should prevail. A return to nature inspired from the lines of the site give rise to a morphological operation that tends towards being geologic – an environmental expression and outcome in qualitative and quantitative parameters respectively.
The quest for development has brought human kind to the brink of disturbing the balance of nature. The entire planet is at risk today from just a single century of human development. With almost half the entire energy resources being used for and by buildings it is of utmost importance that a design institute not only thrive to be self sustained in its energy needs throughout its entire life cycle but propagate and be didactic in its design expression as well.
The need for a physical boundary all along the site perimeter to attain a full degree of closure (security being a major concern), hinders the stimuli – response relationship of a design institute with the city. The edge at the point of entrance has thus been expanded into a public place, which acts as the desired platform. Major public functions which can involve interaction with the city - the auditorium, cafes, galleries, open air exhibition spaces; display screens have been placed there. Students can display their works, expressions, stage plays and appropriate the space in other ways. This place can act as a centre for social awareness for the civil society.
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| The Urban Interface: City Edge |
The canyon is an extremely strong topographical land form in the site. In the program the canyon has been considered as a environmental zone pulling the context of the biodiversity park from across the site. It is being recharged with plantation, the seasonal water body being transformed into a permanent water body by harvesting means. Informal movement from all across the surrounding areas, slope down into the canyon. A peripheral pedestrian edge deliberately lowered to make the experience more intimate acts as a students’ informal place which also connects up to the open spaces of the surrounding academic blocks and the students’ centre.
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| The Canyon |
The pedestrian connection between the urban interface and the seat of the canyon becomes a raised formal promenade. The edges of the promenade formed by the academic blocks on one side and the Cultural hub on the other dictate the urban architectural vocabulary within the campus. The cultural edge is interspersed with a continuous water feature which acts as natural cooling system during the summer months. Open spaces on the side of the academic block flow down as a series of landscaped terraces into the canyon. The open spaces on the cultural side flows down into the activity areas of the residential blocks. The promenade is a place and not a connection, acting as a spillover of the cultural hub with functions like architectural museum, exhibition spaces, galleries, alumni centre, cafe and the spillover from the academic blocks as well as the students’ centre. This is a place of interaction between alumni, students, faculty, exchange students, researchers and international guests.
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| The Promenade |
The edge of the site which traces the road has been developed to form a stark urban response at the city level. With the urban interface punctuating this line we see a series of blocks rising and falling in an overall binding geometry. The residential blocks placed at the closest edge to the residential fabric of the city forms a clear desired disjunction in the language. Pauses of dense greenery in-between the blocks connect the Biodiversity Park from across the road to the site.
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