The IT College building is an addition to the K.J. Somaiya Institute of Engineering on their Sion campus in Northern Mumbai. The site for the new building was flanked on one end by a cement plant, on another by a contaminated rivulet, and the west by the existing 8 stories engineering college building. The client brief was for the new institute to accommodate programs that included Workshops, Laboratories, Lecture Rooms Student Community Rooms along with an extension to the existing cafeteria in the adjoining building, to be built in a second phase. Raising the building on a high plinth to protect against flooding in the monsoons, each of the programs is located based on programmatic adjacencies and around two courtyards. A veranda-like circulation space around the courtyard doubles as an activity spine linking all the study rooms and creating opportunities for students to learn through chance meetings and interaction with each other.
The courtyard facing walls of all programs are designed with openings to allow a visual connection with other students in the courtyards, veranda, and the classrooms clustered around the court. Hence, even when in their respective spaces, the students feel as if they are in a collective learning environment without walls separating them. The Workshops, Laboratories, Lectures, and Community rooms are designed without any shared walls to create vistas outwards between each program, reduce any noise transfer from one room to the next, and allow air circulation around the rooms keeping them cooler. The insulated roof plane spans overall programs linking them together into a distinct singular building while folding into giant water gargoyles that would channel rainwater into the courtyards and further into harvesting tanks.
Team:
Architect: Sameep Padora & Associates (sP+a)
Other participants: Aparna Dhareshwar, Subham Pani, Nikita Khatwani
Photography: Edmund Sumner
