The proposal envisions a flexible, sustainable community center for rural India, serving as a hub for education, health, and social activities. Designed with adaptability, inclusivity, and cost-efficiency, it fosters empowerment, belonging, and growth, while responding to local needs and aspirations through collaborative design rooted in community and environmental harmony.
We embraced the challenge of weaving a space that breathes with its community—flexible yet grounded, inclusive yet specific. Our submission stands as an ever-evolving tapestry, where architecture listens, adapts, and uplifts, nurturing education, belonging, and dreams within a harmonious dialogue of people, place, and purpose. The design for this site responds primarily to four central elements/concerns from the provided brief - Flexibility, Community, Education & Cost.
Flexibility : We see it as a key principle for a socially, environmentally & economically sustainable development. Although we reject any undertones of standardisation, in favour of adaptive architecture that is based on strong foundational principles - that allows utmost flexibility for growth on the given site. While with the change in context, the principles become guides to which appropriate changes can be made in relation to the differences in context.
Community : We believe robust, inclusive programmes and facilitators are the key aspect of a community center. Architecture's role even though is secondary, but nevertheless important and two folded. First - to be the best possible stage to assist in the unfolding of these activities, for which it's essential that it balances well the seclusion and openness, where the formal activities can thrive alongside the spontaneity of informal village events, without being hindered by them. Second - It is essential to craft a place, where the architecture has diverse modes of interacting with the village, and capturing its attention, becoming a part of its psyche/collective consciousness. This is critical to counter neglect and develop care and sense of belonging for the physical space, beyond its programmatic relevance.
Education : A cornerstone to social and personal upliftment, the brief rightly so places a great deal of emphasis on learning, from toddlers to adults. We believe architecture can play a crucial role in different manners for each group. For preschool toddlers this first social experience needs to inculcate a positive feeling of capacity and agency, hence the environment is carefully designed to the child's view point and easy access. For young school kids in their formative years, a balance between the mind and the body, through easy access between indoor/outdoor classrooms, play areas, gardens and natural open areas is crucial. For the adults it becomes important that they can gather in small as well as large group sizes at sometimes overlapping times, to be able to engage in capacity building & awareness programmes.
Costs : We believe any just architecture needs to justify its cost - social, environmental and economical. The systems we practice in, often make most of them incompatible with each other. So design becomes a constant negotiation and priority exercise as much as a creative endeavor. We've tried to find the optimum cost solutions at every stage of the design, based on the priorities of our own and the ones we gauge from the brief.
The project focuses on creating closed circular systems from construction to operation. This begins with proper segregation and creative reuse of construction waste, such as using waste stone pieces as mosaic flooring, broken bricks as the flooring base, roof sheets for door paneling.
Post-completion, waste segregation allows organic matter to be composted for gardens. Sewage is treated and redirected to nourish the kitchen garden, while rainwater is channeled to a percolation pit and pumped out by a borewell to supply water to the site.
"Before researchers become researchers they should become philosophers. They should consider what the human goal is, what it is that humanity to create."
Masanobu Fukuoka
as an architect, imust be multiple people.
as an architect - I must understand biology - the soil, the trees, the life within the land, the ecosystem that is hidden from us, how they affect everything around us - wind, water, temperature.
i must understand politics and geography - land, ownership, how we build, who we build for, borders, boundaries, segregation, knowledge of the land, materials and their sources, who pays for it, who can afford to build, who is included and who is neglected.
i must understand the physics - the movement of the planet around the sun. i must remind myself to see the poetry in that. temperature, forces, air pressure, atmosphere, tensions and compressions, how a structure works and the beauty in being able to create balance.
i must understand history - the stories, mythologies, culture, rituals, of knowledges way beyond comprehension, history of humanity, civilizations, cities, architecture. history of the land, who it belongs to. how does it differ from belonging to a land?
i must understand our interiority - the emotions, feelings, desires, wants, needs, love, connections, community. what does it mean to be a human?
i must understand economincs - affordability, deman and supply, inequality, scarcity, capitalism, what is the value of time?
i must understand that there are things beyond my understanding and be humbled by that.