The city in general, and a South Asian megacity in particular, is a challenging place for a child. To learn and grow, she needs an environment that fosters freedom and exploration – these are hard to come by in today’s city. The Garden School in Mumbai is conceived as this protective space, holding off the oppressive conventions and constraints of the city, for a child to be free.
Set on a tiny plot of about 450 square metres and bordered by an overgrown urban village at one end and a narrow, busy street on the other, it was clear from the start that this kindergarten would need to be a vertical one. The available footprint, after accounting for mandatory setbacks, a staircase and services would accommodate two classrooms at best. We were determined to maintain as much of the plot as possible as an open area at ground level to maximise space for play. The question then was of enabling the transition from ground to the elevated classrooms in as natural a manner as possible. Very early in the design stage, we began toying with the idea of a ramp to make this transition seamless. However, an independent ramp would prove to be impractical both due to an already constrained footprint, and the possibility of the upward trudge becoming a tedium for the little girls.
It was fortuitous as we worked upon the idea, that we discovered the perimeter of the soft, rounded form we were developing equaled the length of the ramp that was needed to traverse from one floor to the next. The ramp thus developed wrapping around the classrooms, with shallowed inclines at the four corners, stair and elevator connections, to meet the floor at a large landing at the entrance to the classrooms. Children race along the ramp, peeping into classrooms along a comfortable incline that turns the ramp into the primary ‘street’ that holds the school together. Internally our team would joke about whether children would race up the ramp to the teachers’ rooms or down to the play areas – one of those two choices seemed easier, by design.
The classrooms sit in a dip leading from the floor landings. Inverted beams along the periphery of the slab allow a clean soffit all across, with the peripheral beam forming a natural edge to the classrooms. The edge with its wide steps allows it to be used for activities like drama or dance, connected to a raised podium. Once inside the classroom, the city becomes a phantom presence – light and forms filter through the perforated metal scrim at the edge of the ramp, and the sounds of the street are dampened so the sounds of the school take over. The ramp as the ‘internal street’ becomes the place where children from within the classroom interact with the ‘outside’ by displaying their work along the glazed walls or wave out to friends as they pass by. Connection with the city beyond is measured, and at the scale of a child. A pattern of low-height, screened openings rise and fall along the ramp’s outer edge. These are calibrated to minimize the entry of the harsh mid-day sun into the building, but also serve as little windows from which children may have a view of the city or wave out at their parents across the street.
Structurally, the elevator shaft and five more columns hold up the building. The ramp is cantilevered off an inverted beam that connects to each of these columns at different heights. At the upper floor, an additional set of columns at the outer edge of the building get added with a transfer floor so that column-free halls can be built above, should the building get extended by a floor or two in the future. The fifth floor, with both the inner and the outer set of columns, serves as a multifunctional space for the school. Material finishes are kept simple, low maintenance and natural wherever possible – natural stone floors, hardwood for internal glass framing and the pivoted fins, with the façade largely in anodized aluminium. Colour forms an important orientation device with the colour of elements like ramp railings changing from floor to floor and that of the external fins changing over each face of the building.
