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Art & Media Centre - The Doon School

 

 

A COLLABORATIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR A RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL

ART & MEDIA CENTRE - DOON SCHOOL

As Lead Architect at Khosla Associates, I co-designed and managed the construction of the 25,000 sq. ft area Art and Media Centre - a climatically sensitive building that enables collaborative learning at The Doon School, India’s premier all boys’ boarding school.

PROJECT DETAILS

Project Experience: Jun. 2007 - Nov. 2008, Bengaluru and Dehradun, India

My Role: Lead Architect, Team Manager, Landscape Architect, 3D Visualizer

Contribution: Architecture, Landscape design, Sustainability, Education

Collaboration: The Doon School - Client, The Energy Research Institute (TERI) - Environmental Engineer, Manjunath & Co - Structural Engineer, Sawhney Builders - Developer

Team: Sandeep Khosla, Amaresh Anand - Khosla Associates

Awards and Recognition: The project was longlisted for the 2010 World Architecture News (WAN) Education Awards, shortlisted for the 2011 World Architecture Festival (WAF), and also featured on archdaily.com.

Project Copyright Khosla Associates, Bengaluru. All rights reserved.

CONTEXT

The client brief outlined the need to infuse a spirit of creativity into the heart of their school campus with the design of a bold and contemporary building that sensitively weaves the past with the present and dynamically leads the school into the future, transitioning from a lecture-oriented to a more facilitative instructional environment.

The selected site interfaced iconic 100-year-old English Renaissance brick architecture on one side and natural foliage and landscaped gardens on the other. The new building design demanded a creative engagement of old English renaissance in a new contemporary mould.

CHALLENGE

The bold, contemporary and abstract building is viewed from the outside as a composition of abstract sculptural forms of varying material and texture, emerging from a central spine. Exposed brick tiles juxtaposed with olive colored corrugated metal sheets and set against an omnipresent spine of Yellow slate.  The two buildings of the art school – one for art instruction primarily housing painting, ceramic, sculpture , and textile studios, and the other, with a lecture hall, film studio, publications room, and display galleries, are connected by an internal bridge. Adequate cross ventilation of all the studios and galleries through courtyards, filtered north light through the skylight system with a built in stack effect to flush out the hot air and humidity in peak summer, and large overhangs on the south and west side protects the internal volumes from the fierce summer sun.

MY ROLE

As the Project Architect, I co-developed architectural presentations, working drawings and details while managing design development within the team and coordinating on-site construction. Working with TERI, we designed solar powered exhaust systems in the skylights, rain water harvesting methods to replenish a 100 year old aqueduct, adequate cross ventilation and indirect sunlight through courtyards and using locally sourced construction materials to build a Griha Green rated climate sensitive building. 

OUTCOME

The building’s success lies in the fact that since it’s opening in October 2010, the building has successfully attracted over 180 students annually to study art as opposed to the 20-30 students in the preceding years.