PROJECTS
domus 47 January 2016
60 PROJECTS
architectureRED PLACES FOR PEOPLE A pair of buildings completed for a University south of Chennai offers a distinctive sense of place and a renewed sense of identity to an old institution. Setting the new buildings within the existing fabric, the design approach develops from the notion of a vertical campus – taller blocks that anchor the disparate aspects through a common ‘new datum’ Text Suprio Bhattacharjee Photos architectureRED
The bell rings. The more or less empty sevenstorey high void transforms before my eyes. Sound levels peak sharply – echoes of voices and busy chatter as students pour out of their classrooms. The corridor transforms. What seemed like whimsical angled projections along the inner perimeter of this vast courtyard become thriving pockets of student flow eddies. They sit around the benches that nestle within these alcoves. Those seated, wanting to look at the sky lean back onto the railing and rest their heads for a clear view. Blue or grey, the sky is never obscured here. On the other side from where I stand, across the courtyard from the staircase foyer where I’ve positioned myself, students find personal space between bands of vertical fins that envelop one side of the courtyard. There the setting is more intimate and contained. Like private balconies staring into this space. Visible through a void below along the steel staircase, the inner amphitheatre quickly fills up with students – a space that offers an opportunity for film projections and lectures when needed. Here, from where I stand, the courtyard and the pockets of openness it expands into is a vast theatre of activity. And not the theatre of decanting that most courtyards end up being – spaces of transition and passage – but rather a space of activity outside the classrooms. We’re still inside the building, I remember. The verandas lining the periphery of the courtyard remain alive with students and faculty members who find place in those alcoves. They become attractors, drawing others to them. My companion and guide for the day’s visit, Biju Kuriakose – one half of architectureRED, the practice that designed this place – has spent
domus 47 January 2016
the past few minutes scurrying about with his iPhone, frantically clicking pictures of this transforming inner realm. It’ll come in useful for future presentations, he surmises, proof that what was conceived on the drawing board is actually working. Earlier in the day I visit architectureRED’s offices in Adyar, in a quaint two-storey bungalow set along a tree-lined street with low buildings. It seems like a fantastic setting to practice Architecture from, within the bustling city. It’s early in the day, but the staff has been putting in extra hours working towards a deadline. I can see a model of a new housing project taking shape, amongst other models lying around. This is an office that believes in the work of the hand. “We do lots of models,” Biju explains, as he takes me around. We leave for the University where the practice has been developing a series of new interventions within a previous campus landscape of older disjoined buildings. Along the route, I’m appraised of the approach the practice decided to take – not seeing the new buildings as objects but rather as set within the fabric of a campus – as
PROJECTS 61
such the opportunity for doing a set of new facilities with a higher permissible building area meant that the practice had to resort to the notion of a ‘vertical campus’ - taller blocks that anchor the disparate aspects through a common ‘new datum’. An hour long drive later, we are at the BS Abdur Rahman University. The campus is organised along the classical idea of an axial academic spine that leads to a clock tower. This clock tower becomes a fulcrum, with the intersection of a perpendicular spinal route. These spines are vehicular now, and their disposition along with their interface with the adjacent buildings means that there’s really very little of the ‘campus street’ here. These edges are as lifeless as a typical suburban street – a pity in a campus where buildings barely crept over 4 storeys in height. When they were approached with the commission, the practice wasn’t asked to redefine the campus. That has been an incidental outcome. An initial contract to design one of the buildings slowly led to others, and the practice saw themselves faced with
This spread: Department of Life Sciences, BS Abdur Rahman University, Chennai. The new building is a vertical re-imagination of the existing campus framework. It retains the pedestrian relationship on the ground level, while also creating spaces for social activities, movement, and interaction that are considered to be synonymous with campus life. The staccato rhythm of the window design is both aesthetic and functional, defining the facade as well as permitting sufficient light and ventilation into the spaces within
domus 47 January 2016
62 PROJECTS
the enviable task of having to restructure the future campus (even though they were not explicitly asked to). Three new academic buildings (one each for Aeronautics, the Life Sciences and Architecture), a Student Activity Centre (Canteen, Shared Campus Facilities) as well as a set of buildings for new faculty housing and student dorms – this was an enviable task to add a new layer that, whilst defining the renewed sense of an old and respected campus, also needed to work with the constraints of what the old matrix had to offer. As such, the possibility of an initial masterplan was replaced by a method where the practice was “building the masterplan” along the way as newer commissions kept adding up. The opportunity to create distinct places thus became the cornerstone of the project’s conception. From the clock tower, the white glazed face of the Department of Aeronautics becomes visible, raised loftily on what appears to be
a set of beefed up chevron columns over a mound. The large vitrine of the glazed end was meant to focus the internal spaces onto an old Banyan tree (now barely a shade of its former grand self) remarks Biju, which ironically was trimmed by the University administration because their spanking new building wasn’t visible from the street! It is a poignant moment in an otherwise joyous atmosphere that the building engenders. Stepped green terraces cascade upward to the raised public plinth – an emphatic artificial landform on an otherwise featureless ground surface. The street is drawn in vehemently, while the building hovering above embraces this piece of the city that has stationed itself on this southern edge of the campus. The view from the street into the raised public plinth offers a glimpse into the seven-storey void mentioned earlier. The beefy chevron columns offer a create a sandwich of open, freely-accessible public space, above which are
This spread: Department of Life Sciences, BS Abdur Rahman University, Chennai. Above and opposite page top left and below left: the stairs wind about the buildings corner perimeter in a series of elongated landings and switchbacks that add spatial drama and intrigue to the experience of the building. Below: inside the building, stairs fulfil their basic ‘utilitarian’ role allowing for quick access
domus 47 January 2016
the classrooms, lecture rooms and instruction spaces, while below this, a light-well offers a glimpse into the double-height workshop spaces that form the base of the building, sheathed by its landform-like exterior. The practice, I am informed, believes in constantly negotiating between the figure and the ground. This is apparent here, as the ground is formed into a terrain that invades the building’s heart and makes it its own. Standing inside, I am overwhelmed as I look back onto the terraced forecourt and the campus streets beyond. Students have already made this into a place of exchange, as they occupy this bowl shaped landscape for leisure and learning. The raised plinth offers a vantage view of the campus, not unlike the experience of viewing the greatest cities or the greatest of gardens from a midlevel after climbing up a grand flight of steps. The tripartite arrangement of the section (workshops-public realm-classrooms) carries itself into the volumetric disposition of the
PROJECTS 63
building. This is clear from the street and the aforementioned forecourt – with the northern glazed block raised off the mound as mentioned earlier, a taller and more solid southern volume with narrower windows clad in what appears from a distance as a featureless skin of brick, with a lower block with banded floor reveals sandwiched in between. A mock-up for the window brise-soleil sits strategically on this sandwiched block – Biju hopes for this part of the work to be completed soon, so that the west facing classrooms won’t get the harsh afternoon sun. The northern block has a dense repetitive vertical banding that envelopes all sides of the building – reading much “like the diagram” as Biju explains – as such it becomes apparent that the practice conceives of its buildings as constructed programmatic, spatial and volumetric diagrams that are embedded within a larger setting – and as such are meant to read less than standalone objects. This attempt is obvious in the way in
This page: the base of the Life Sciences building is raised a few steps off the street, accessed through a subtle groundscape defined by paths and ramps
domus 47 January 2016
64 PROJECTS
This page: process drawings showing design development of the Department of Life Sciences building
0
ELEVATION 1
ELEVATION 1 1
3
0
ELEVATION 2 1
3
5m
5m
ELEVATION 2
0
5M
domus 47 January 2016
PROJECTS 65
10 A 2
5 5
5
3
5 4
5
2
1 6
8
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
6
A
Lobby Electrical Room Toilet Store Lab Elevator Shaft Classroom Corridor Connection to Existing Block Existing Block
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
A
7
7
3 8 2
8
A SEVENTH FLOOR PLAN
1 6
6
Project Name Department of Life Sciences, BS Abdur Rahman University Project Type: Institutional Location Vandalur, Chennai, India Client BS Abdur Rahman University Project Status Completed, 2014 Built-up Area 70,000 sqft Client Team V N A Jalal, M S Jagan, Shuja Ahmed, Jamal J Structural Engineers Somadev Nagesh Consultants MEP Consultants Sumanam Engineering Photographs Rajan Gero, Ram Annamalai Project Design Team Biju Kuriakose, Kishore Panikkar, Ashok Mahalingam, Apoorva Madhusudan, Kani Pandian, Yasir Azami
SECTION
0
5M
66 PROJECTS
domus 47 January 2016
which the Aeronautics building melds with the groundscape (the nature of its section arises out of the need for double height workshop spaces directly accessible from the ground for heavy equipment – flying machines for one – while at the same time negating the otherwise impenetrable nature of what this would become as the base of a building), and the staggered roofline that minimises the appearance of a singular mass. Both the nature of the Figure and the Ground it sits upon are called in to question. The Building itself is a porous figure – there is never a moment where one is not connected to the sky or the breeze – and the view of the treetops. Traversing the building is a rewarding enmeshed experience. Our next stop is the new building for the School of Life Sciences. This is a smaller building, a rectangular footprint that is extruded to accommodate the maximum permissible building volume. The plinth dimensions, I’m informed by Biju, continues the staggered nature of the adjacent building volumes this forms an extension of – as such the FigureGround relationship of this block is maintained, although the vertical dimension has changed. But this is no ordinary matchbox of course. I am excited by the distinctive perimeter of solids and voids, the staccato rhythm of the windows, and the staircase that wraps around portions of the building. This building is as clear a manifestation of a diagram as one can get – raw and unforgiving in its stoic nature. This is not an object of prettiness – but it hints at a pragmatic pared down simplicity that I’m eager to explore. In that sense, the Aeronautics building seemed to be consciously crafted and choreographed – materially and spatially. There are those conscious tectonic and drama-inducing moments – an industrial steel staircase, an exposed concrete lift shaft, white rendered walls, colours used strategically, window openings that perform unique functions, stone flooring laid in consciously interesting patterns, banded stone and grass in the forecourt, the featureless brick volume bulging precariously above – all adding up to an overlapping experience of vistas. The base of the Life Sciences building is raised a few steps off the street, accessed through a subtle groundscape defined by paths and ramps. The adjacent canteen block adds life to what is the ‘front’ of the building – although this will change once the new Student Activity Centre is built on the other side of the building. One enters into a spacious foyer – where the narrow dimension of the building becomes apparent. From here one makes a choice – the lift, an internal stair, or the exterior stair – with a more-or-less standard floor-plate arrangement of spaces in enfilade. An outcome of the necessity of two staircases as per fire regulations, this becomes the architecture’s master stroke – with one performing a ‘utilitarian’ role allowing for quick access, while the other performs the more poetic role of the ‘promenade de architecturale’ – winding about the buildings corner perimeter in a series of elongated landings and switchbacks that adds spatial drama and intrigue to the experience of the building. The two stairs also offer access to the adjacent building’s terrace – the practice hopes that in the future the roof terrace becomes a hub of student activity – with green spaces and recreation activities, extending the ‘campus ground’ up into the new building and out onto the roofscape of the previous staggered volumes. While this may not be realised immediately, what this has done is given the
domus 47 January 2016
PROJECTS 67
This spread: Department of Aeronautics, BS Abdur Rahman University, Chennai. By capitalising on the existing lush green campus and the fragmented existing built environment, the design reflects the need to define the space for interaction in relation to its immediate context by which a seamless transition within the campus celebrates a homogeneous spatial culture through engaging every built structure to a vibrant public space
building its distinct sectional profile - the upper building volume shifting subtly as a nod to the roof level of the adjacent block. And what it has also done is to create this dramatic corner on the building’s South East aspect where the innards open up to the distant landscape. Even though the practice was not really aiming for the poetic or the deeply immersive, the experience of climbing that semi-exterior staircase where one is constantly thrown in and out of the built envelope is a rewarding experience that brings to the fore the binary of the inside and the outside starkly by providing a pared down middle ground that becomes a space for pause and quiet. The breeze whips us constantly on this April morning, and the views across the forest the University sits along are breath-taking to say the least. The hills in the distance are visible over the datum of the tree-tops from this strategic aerie, and the building’s stance puts forth the eternal opposition of nature vs artifice back into focus – though here, there seems to have been no conflict.
68 PROJECTS
domus 47 January 2016
This page: process drawings showing the incremental development of the Department of Aeronautics’ design. Opposite page: Department of Aeronautics, BS Abdur Rahman University, Chennai. View from with the central plaza. The design capitalises a strong figure-ground relationship by orienting balconies with distinct edges that overlook the dramatic response to the plaza
domus 47 January 2016
FROM THE ARCHITECT’S PROJECT DESCRIPTION Department of Life Sciences, BS Abdur Rahman University, Chennai, India This building, completed in 2014, is among the first few additions in the rapidly expanding BS Abdur Rahman University Campus initially established in 1984 and spread across 61 acres at Vandalur, in Chennai. With its growing needs compelling a vertical re-imagination of the existing framework of the campus, retaining its strong pedestrian relationship when moving from the groundup by creating spaces of interest and activity in between, was critical to the approach to
PROJECTS 69
planning, right from the beginning. Every building on the campus with its clear set of underlying goals and governing principles, contributes to the vision for the campus, in an incremental way: seeking to diffuse the strong thresholds and forge an active relationship between the buildings, spaces and streets, over a period of time. While creating major public zones, the buildings subtly transform their ground planes to anchor campus activities, thereby establishing links with the streets that feed them – creating nodes, re-defining vital axes and emphasising points of focus. The architecture strives to allow this character to flow vertically into the buildings for spaces of engagement to thrive.
The Department of Life Sciences, at the campus level, was planned to be an extension of the four existing buildings it neighbours and lead into the outdoor canteen abutting it. It plugs into the corner site as a tall tower, in contrast to the low-lying blocks adjacent, to create a bold anchor point at the end of the axis. The previously unused rooftops of the neighbouring blocks are activated through this building, by zoning public spaces at that level, spatially linking them through programme, and physically through a bridge that continues as a green roof, inviting informal public activity. At the ground plane, the space around is articulated to serve both as an entryway as
domus 47 January 2016
70 PROJECTS
B
8
1 A
A
2
4
5
6 3
7
B FIRST FLOOR PLAN / PLAZA LEVEL
4
4 5
5 5
1 5
5
2
4 3
THIRD FLOOR PLAN
8
6
5
1 2
6
5
6
4 3
7
5
SIXTH FLOOR PLAN
0
10M
domus 47 January 2016
PROJECTS 71
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Plaza Landscape Court Toilet Elevator Shaft Faculty Room Avionics Lab Simulation Lab Lecture Hall
SECTION AA
Department of Aeronautics, BS Abdur Rahman University Project Type Institutional Location Vandalur, Chennai, India Client BS Abdur Rahman University Project Status Completed, 2015 Built-up Area 1,50,000 sqft Client Team V N A Jalal, M S Jagan, Shuja Ahmed, Jamal J Structural Engineers Somadev Nagesh Consultants MEP Consultants Sumanam Engineering Photographs Rajan Gero, Ram Annamalai, Ramanathan R Project Design Team Biju Kuriakose, Kishore Panikkar, Apoorva Madhusudan, Kani Pandian, Sowmya Sudarsanam, Kiruthika Balasubramanian, Yasir Azami, Vigneshwar VS
SECTION BB
0
ELEVATION1 2
4
6
10m
ELEVATION 1
ELEVATION 2
0
ELEVATION 2 2
4
6
10m
0
10M
domus 47 January 2016
72 PROJECTS
well as an extension of activity, which stretches across the courtyards in the middle as a thoroughfare for movement. This spatial acknowledgement of movement and interaction, both synonymous with campus life, at the ground plane as well as an elevated level, is what defined the course for form development of the building. Given the constraints of the site, and the intentions for the space, the building was envisioned as a pure extrusion of a rectangle, with the spaces free to express themselves on the form. The structural system is true to its visual appearance: an internal ‘grey’ volume held together by the structural grid, wrapped by a cantilevering envelope that forms the facade. Located along a street, the perforations on this
façade coupled with the exposed circulation paths that boldly swathe it, help break the massive volume down to a more human scale. The random play of the strip-like windows allows the built envelope to continue to be perceived as an opaque mass, while permitting sufficient light and ventilation to the spaces within. A blank wall looks onto the street imparting a sculptural quality to the building, and a strong edge to the street axis, while also being a compelling visual anchor. All in all, the form of the building is a culmination of both: the decisions at building level, based on the opportunities and constraints available, and the major vision for the campus: with each decision at building level representing the parts that reinforce the whole.
domus 47 January 2016
Department of Aeronautics, BS Abdur Rahman University, Chennai, India BSA University in Chennai imparts character and enhances programmatic distribution to the diverse designs. Department of Aeronautics is emplaced within an endowed context of a university campus, intended to achieve balance between the building and space. By capitalising on the existing lush green campus and the fragmented existing built environment, the design reflects the need to define the space for interaction in relation to its immediate context by which a seamless transition within the campus celebrates a homogeneous spatial culture through engaging every built structure to a vibrant public space. The constant dialogue between the solid and the void enhances the journey through the campus and embraces the spatial integrity. The design focuses on active campus nodes that pivot interaction spaces. The buildings along the cardinal axis and the campus street embrace a direct physical and a visual relationship with the streets which in turn becomes an extension of this homogeneous spacial culture to create an interactive vertical network. The street abutting the site for the aeronautical campus behaves as a physical link between residential zones and lacks this quality of engagement prevalent along the intersecting axes and has the potential to be
PROJECTS 73
activated. The site terminates the existing campus spine, which calls for the creation of an active space and an interactive form to create a rich visual landmark that accentuates the street, programmatically. By responding to the need to create sync between the street edge and the building front, the character of the spine is extended into and beyond the aeronautical block. This requisite is envisioned by gradually raising the land form into a plaza by invigorating flexible interaction spaces within and by visually anchoring the foreground to the building masses. The informality of the entrance plaza allows the users to engage with the highly active axis of the campus and incepts the strong image of the building in totality. The built mass oriented along the central axis is floating above the extend spine to evocate the potential to create a destination for the active campus network, and also edge the destination of the existing street with a strong visual anchor. On the other end of the site a vertical exposed brick mass is deeply rooted to the ground plane to ensure its physical presence to be perceived from the ground plane. Adding a central mass bridging the either edges of the building counter balance the verticality and dilutes the massiveness of the exquisite form. The transition from the plaza toward a horizontally spread entrance court imposing the lightness of the space by allowing the filtered light to wash the court, and ensures a seamless entry toward the building. The
role of architecture to play with hierarchy of spaces narrated in a rhythmic manner ensures to create an aura by exploding into a monumental courtyard, capsuled between the building masses. The courtyard weaves the entire transition within the built mass across varies levels and establishes its integrity by retaining the central focus and enhances the visual connectivity throughout the structure to revolve around it. The design capitalises a strong figure-ground relationship by orienting balconies with distinct edges that overlook the dramatic response to the plaza and to the abutting street. Defining the orientation of the building edge is dictated by the necessitating orientations fused with material contrasts create dynamic spatial demarcations along the exteriors. The diverse layers of materiality hold the masses together and engage several planes within the heterogeneous section that are comprised in the design framework. While the form express order and discipline by defining its edges and framing the spaces, the sequential carved out informal spaces at various levels trigger interaction and ensure flexibility and diversity in and around the campus. The building as a node dilutes the boundaries between the building and the space to create an engaging vertical network and radically transforms the figure ground to achieve balance within the campus.
This spread: Department of Aeronautics, BS Abdur Rahman University, Chennai. Opposite page top and below left: the vertical exposed brick structure is deeply rooted to the ground plane to ensure its physical presence to be perceived from the ground level. Opposite page below right: filtered light enters the interior spaces of the building in abundance. This page: the design focuses on active campus nodes that pivot interaction spaces
