Building Making

Ansh Shetty
Feb 28, 2023
2 min read

Updated: Mar 29, 2023

Trombay Public Primary School & Community Ground

at Trombay, Cheetah Camp

Building Making

First Name - Last Name | Semester 6 | 2022-23

Course Outline

The modernist logic of the understanding of “public” which often reduces subjects within a space into objective entities. It worked through the hypothesis that the “public” is not a singular lump or “mass” within which each body has equal aspirations and behaviour, instead, it is a heterogeneous entity with contesting claims and occupations in space. Spaces within public institutions and urban contexts are designed through standardised logics of such “public” but are produced and lived through several subjective contestations which often blur, defy, subvert, disregard or occupy them in awkward ways. These spatial manoeuvres by their users are attempts towards the formation of smaller localised micro-groups which are essential conditions in creating psychologically sound and meaningful preconditions for inhabiting spaces.

The studio attempted to experiment with architectural forms and frameworks towards producing such a sense of these physical localisations. The course helped us to carry out detailed development and refinement of building design through the technical resolution of structural systems, material performance and experience, member assembly, threshold-enclosure details and process of construction.

The site, Site Forces & Context

Programme & Scope & Design Intent

the children align themselves in invisible thresholds on the basis of familiarity, comfort and gender, leading to most of the boys occupying the ground for their more physical games and the girls using the classrooms to spend their recreational time how can architecture respond to the idea of an informally segregated playground and examine the heterogeneous nature of an assumed homogeneous public?

as the negotiations on the playground and in the gully settle, there exists a pressure between the various groups that leads to a sense of controlled entropy, the project aims to investigate and redirect this pressure on the site.

in an attempt to release and redirect this pressure, the segregation of the ground is methodically done by mapping the invisible boundaries. The children often prefer playing on the stages and staircases that they find vacant, vertical relief is provided by raising the plinths to various heights. the form is further modulated and slopes are formed to generate the experiences of the staircase and bring a sense of continuum to the site.

Exploration of the possibilities of providing relief and releasing the pressure of the ground by providing controlled segregated, semi-private spaces and also having a controlled exchange with the gully, transforming the narrative to an enriching one than an encroaching one.