An education in Architecture is an education on Life.
To Learn deeply, one must Live fully.
The architecture of the school itself must then nurture and celebrate all that this life entails.
It must have the FLEXIBILITY to support the wide range of activities that an architectural pedagogy demands, the INVENTIVENESS to inspire generations of architects in the pursuit of excellence and a genuine OPENNESS to foster a community both internally and with the larger university.
In doing so, the building reinforces a belief in the POTENTIAL of architecture as a positive agent of CHANGE - a living lesson for its students over time.
The building was an entry to a limited competition conducted by an educational trust in Bangalore. Located within a larger university campus spread over 100 acres of gently undulating land in the Northern fringes of Bangalore city, the design brief required the allocated plot to be planned for an Architecture and a Design school that would be constructed in a phased manner. The campus itself was undergoing a modification in its overall configuration on the basis of a new masterplan.
The building for the Architecture school responds to the proposed masterplan of the university by creating an court at the South East corner of site that draws entry off the main road that links the campus and is entered at the first level via a flight of stairs that begins from this court. The architecture school is planned as a series of expandable modules that would support extension of the school to full capacity over time, contained within a landscaped 'bowl'. Main studios are at the upper level with the benefit of natural light streaming in from skylights while the mid-floor is an active, multifunctional level with administrative spaces, lecture halls, library, labs and the post graduate school.
Construction is in reinforced concrete with a uniform, replicable grid and infill walls in masonry, glass and lightweight partition. The building is a subtle assemblage of structural systems and building materials with flat slabs, framed concrete construction, steel staircases, stone masonry, and a skin in a play of patterned masonry that make the building a demonstration of building technique to its inhabitants. The structures respond to their beautiful natural setting by hovering lightly over the earth that is reshaped in a manner that works with the natural terrain, and runoff is collected within a natural pond flanking the entrance court.
A flexible, robust, seamless environment for learning architecture, realised simply in a pragmatically ordered form, makes the Architecture school a valuable new addition to the growing campus of the University.
