 The site chosen for this small addition of a children`s library within a school in rural Maharashtra, was a sliver between existing buildings and the school boundary, a site that almost implied a linear building footprint to adjust the program for the chosen site. Alluding to the impetus that children have towards landscape over a building we imagined the library building to be a formal extension of the ground plane. A place inside for study and a place above for play. With the limited teaching resources available in the larger vicinity we needed the inspiring spatial experience to be a magnet to attract students and hopefully other residents from the nearby settlements after school hours. On our first visit to the site it was interesting to see Geodesic structures built by an engineer for a few of the school buildings, we were somewhat encouraged by this to pursue a project that followed from a construction intelligence. We hence parsed through several possible material configurations ranging from concrete shells to brick vaults for building this &lsquo;architectural landscape`. At this point we were captivated by the material efficiencies of the Catalan tile vault from the 16th century, it`s use by Gustavino in the early 19th century and finally the incredible details from the work of Eladio Dieste from the mid-twentieth century. While working with the specific site condition we used Rhino Vault developed by the Block Research Group at the ETH to articulate a pure compression form for the project? The library lies at the intersection of a student`s daily routine it became a pavilion accessed from multiple sides with students potentially engaging with books while traversing through the library or over it. The library interior has varied spatial &amp; seating systems, a floor stool system towards the edges for a more intimate study area and towards the centre, tables and stools for collaborative study. The self-structured window bays are striated profiles for increased stability with economical window section sizes. The construction technology for the project also makes a case to reexamine the age-old binaries of the global and local as being in opposition. The regional or the local within the South Asian paradigm typically manifests within strict formal constraints of the style in memory. This is often at the expense of material efficiencies. Our effort to search for a material and construction efficiency in brick tile looked to leverage the networks of knowledge that our practices are situated in, allowing us to enrich the regional or local through the extended capacities of the global. In using principles ranging from the Catalan Tile Vaulting sytem to the compression ring detail from the work of Eladio Dieste in Uruguay, to using a form finding software plug -in made in Switzerland the library is a resultant of not only lessons learnt from various geographic locations but also various lessons through time/history. 

Maya Somaiya Library

 The brief was to design a temple for the residents of villages around Nandyal. In the dry terrain of Nandyal, the main concern was to provide a space which would marry the socio-cultural expectations of a temple with the ecological framework and dynamics of and around the site. The immediate context of cotton and chily farms in the region were fed by a natural canal system which had dried up. The ecological strategy for the temple, thus began with recharging of groundwater. Water overflow from the limestone quarries was led to a low-lying recharge pit or &lsquo;kund`: the banks of which was imagined as a social space, in the manner of a traditional ghat; a flight of steps leading down to a waterbody. This negotiation of land and water with steps is a significant part of India`s architectural heritage as is seen in the kunds (water tanks) within temple precincts. The water infrastructure is able to harvest roughly 1370000 litres of water. The planning of the temple itself was based on a 10th century temple for the same deity at Tirupati in Southern India and similarly includes the Balaji &amp; Varahaswamy shrines and a Pushkarini (water tank). The construction process uses locally available black limestone slabs corbelled to form the main body of the temple. The same corbelled profile also incorporates soil and planting in the lower half of the temple body to buffer against the heat and finally this stone corbelling turns into a ghat i.e the steps that access the water. 

Balaji Temple

 Aatam has a residential program mix, containing hostels rooms for students along with a residence for the family that owns the plot. Six years in the making, the project is located in the dry and hot climate of Kota, Rajasthan. The town of Kota in Northern India is a coaching hub for training students to take entrance exams to study at the coveted IIT engineering colleges in India. Every year around 200,000 students move to Kota spending a minimum of a year at coaching classes living in private hostels specifically made for student housing in the town. The economy of the Kota is driven by this temporal population. For the IIT aspirant Kota occupies center stage, so much so, that it spawned a popular OTT show which highlights the travails and tribulations of student aspirants living there. While the coaching centers are as state of the art as any other such educational institute in the country, student housing is neglected and devoid of much thinking. Natural light, ventilation social spaces are mostly absent. There is a high risk of failure in getting through the IIT exams which when coupled with the severity or lack of sympathetic living spaces can be psychologically oppressive. The Kota hostel is a small beginning in reimagining student living in the town. Working with elements of the traditional haveli (Rajasthan house form) like vertically proportioned courtyards, Jharokhas (look out balconies) and stone Jali`s (perforated screens) the project is a remaking of the haveli form suited to the programmatic needs of the students. In stark contrast to the surrounding row house types which together form an impervious wall to the street, the Kota hostel opens up, animating the street with views of the courtyard and then to the playground beyond the plot. The combination of social space of terraces and courtyards creates a wind tunnel enabling breeze to flow through the building. The open to sky courtyard is spanned above by a bridge that connects the two arms of the residential unit for the owners. The building structures through the section multiple stepped erraces of shaded social spaces for the students to creates a visual connect across the other levels as well as with the street and the courtyard. 

Aatam Hostel & House

 In Buddhist mythology, Jetvana is the name of one of the Buddha`s most important spatial edifices which when literally translated means: the grove of Jeta, land donated to the sangha for founding a monastery. It was of semiotic significance that the site offered by Samir Somaiya owner of the neighboring sugar factory in rural Maharashtra for the Buddhist Learning Center was thickly forested, an idyllic grove of sorts. The institute was programmed as a spiritual &amp; skill development center for the native Dalit Baudh Ambedkar Buddhist community. The mandate of Jetavana is to provide a spiritual anchor for their practice of Buddhist thought through meditation and yoga while also imparting training and skill development for members of the community. With the mandate of not harming a single tree on site, the sizable program was split up into 6 buildings each situated in gaps between the heavy planting. Through the design process, two courtyards emerged as links suturing these buildings into a common identity. Further by inverting the roof profile with a central valley in the middle and rising edges, the interior spaces were visually connected with the foliage outside. The interior spaces hence are also a function of the outside setting, with a lightness that belies the heavy programs on site. The separation of the roof from the walls while providing much-needed cross ventilation also scales the building towards the courtyard.   Working closely with Hunnarshala, an institution looking to revive and resuscitate local building traditions we collated a material palate that uses rammed loadbearing walls of basalt stone dust. The stone dust, which is waste from a nearby quarry, is mixed with waste fly ash, a by-product from the adjoining factory that in the past was paying people to cart the waste fly ash away. Repurposed wood from old shipping vessels acts as roof structure, with the understructure made of mud rolls, which are also great insulation. The roof itself is finished with clay roof tiles, remnants from older demolished buildings. The flooring is a traditional mud and dung floor done by members of the local community, which is known to have antiseptic properties. Our approach to the Jetavan project looks to extend the idea of the regional paradigm whilst separating it from the pervasive &lsquo;image` of what defines the local. The construction process also sets out an approach that looks to further construction techniques based on local materiality not necessarily used natively but appropriates for its context. 

384H+RRJ

Jetavan

 The site for a small apartment building located in the Jubilee Hills check post area of Hyderabad city offered vantage views of the city and of the adjoining park. Hyderabad is one of the early movers amongst cities in India that used form-based coding to structure the construction of new buildings. The client approached us to work on the building post obtaining municipal approvals for the extent of the building envelope. While working with approved building envelope extents we re-planned the floor layout so that the two apartment units on each floor were cross-ventilated through terraces and balconies on adjoining faces of each unit. The second point of intervention was the building skin comprising of walls and horizontal sun protection. Working with master brick masons from Pondicherry, in southern India we designed a wall system made from 9-inch-thick brick walls that corbelled to carry the load of stone-faced lintels/chajjas.Glass bay windows are recessed, set into the openings formed by the corbelled brickwork and the cantilevered stone-faced lintels. To ensure the structural integrity of the wall corbelling, wooden templates were designed for the masons to work with. So, while the project is visually defined by these corbelled walls, the systemic potential of the project is from the design of these simple low-tech wooden templates that allow for the corbelling to happen with accuracy. The project through its development of tools and construction processes looks to further the expertise of the craftsman and help in evolving the extent of their craft.  

Sienna Apartments

 The factory is located on a plot in a logistical warehousing facility on the outskirts of Mumbai. As is typical of most industrial warehouses in the area, the default construction material for most buildings is corrugated metal sheathing and the general prevalent built form is opaque without a visual or physical connection to the immediate environment, thus turning the precinct into a continuous hard edge. Our first instinct was to position the project as relief from the experience of this existing impervious precinct mass. On the North-West corner, a portion of the site was low-lying, lower than an adjacent seasonal pond. This low-lying part of our site was a natural receiver for groundwater levels rising up during the monsoons. We retained this natural site depression and hence the seasonal ingress of water during the monsoons rather than keep the water out. This move maintains the physical linkages that exist between our site and the surrounding landscape. Over this landscape, we cantilevered a portion of our building creating a shaded and naturally cooled social and recreational space where the staff of the factory can take a break from their routines. While the expression of the building`s heaviness was of interest, the heart of the project is the void of the central open-to-sky courtyard around which the factory`s production floors are organized. These relatively thin floorplates ensured well-lit workspaces. The cast-in-place heavy concrete materiality of the &lsquo;porous` block is in sharp contrast to the lightweight but opaque steel sheathing of the buildings. The corner void connecting to the central void courtyard creates an extroverted factory type, visually linking to the access road beyond the site as well as offering relief from the impenetrable adjoining building masses.   

Concrete Void Factory

 The Lattice house is located in a new suburb on the outskirts of Jammu city in north-western India. Its context is symptomatic of the nature of urbanization in many small cities, like Jammu scattered throughout the fast urbanizing Indian landscape, where formal planning mechanisms are reactive to new and informal settlements. With the immediate landscape compromised by the lack of government/ municipal intervention the house becomes a function of a need for structured form. The lack of a distinct contextual urban fabric (besides the infrastructure pylons) also projects its role as a distinct urban marker visible from a distance, its material singularity in sharp contrast. The fa&ccedil;ade of the house is a response to the climatic severity of the region which experiences extremely hot and dry weather for 8 months of the year. Horizontal bands of vertical wood lattice screens encompass balconies, sun-breakers, storage etc., in an attempt to scale the mass of the house as a series of sectional horizontal shifts. Programmatically the house is structured by the clients lifestyle which involves a lot of entertaining and hence the kitchen becomes the centre of the plan flanked by the living/dining on one side and the lawn on the other. The private functions of bedrooms are placed to the rear making the collective programs of living, dining and cooking, happen as a seamless space towards the front opening out into the lawn. All programs whether private or public open into side or front garden spaces. 

Lattice House

A landscape driven, ecologically responsive built strategy was adopted for this large campus design to develop a contemporary manifestation of the &lsquo;Gurukul` way of living; where the development is consolidated to form a high-density built environment, conserving ample virgin landscape to be regenerated as forest cover. The primary intent was to perpetuate and preserve ecological justice and yet set the tone for sensible development in the metropolitan area.   An attempt has been made to consolidate results in social cohesiveness and resource-sharing, further optimized through utility of multifunctional flexible spaces. Green Fingers penetrate the built mass from the peripheral green verges and public streets in the transverse direction creating a pedestrian network as seen in traditional Indian cities. The architectural expression of the campus of Maharashtra National Law University is perceived as a tribute to the long standing testimony of the state`s excellence in building with nature through Rock cut Architecture - where the built and the un-built intertwine in a seamless relationship fostering evocative experiences of light and shade, inside and outside, sky and ground. 

National Law University

The studio believes that India&rsquo;s vast breadth of socio-cultural environments require multiple modes of practice and process to engage with the country&rsquo;s diverse contexts. Type, Program, Design and Building processes are subservient to the immediacy of each project&rsquo;s unique frame of reference. The studio&rsquo;s approach is to look to context as a repository of latent resources, connecting process with networks of materials and skill.   The practice has in the past received the Wallpaper Design Award for Best Public Building,  Beazley Architecture Prize, Wienerberger Brick Award, Archdaily Building of The Year 2019, Wallpaper Design Award for House of the Year, as well as the Architectural Review&rsquo;s Emerging Architecture and the AR Library Commendation Awards.    Besides the architectural practice, the studio also runs a not-for-profit sPare that researches issues of urbanization in India. Their research project on forms of affordable housing in Mumbai has been published as a book by the NAi010 (Netherlands) in 2020 and was also exhibited at the Seoul Biennale 2019 Collective City where they curated a small India section for the exhibition as well. 

Sameep Padora and Associates

SITES

DRAWINGS