Thapar University Student Accommodation

The University’s brief included an overarching masterplan for the campus and several key buildings within it- including two sets of student residences, a sports centre and a large learning centre to incorporate a new library, lecture theatres and a computer science building. The project is a unique experiment, deeply embedded in time and space, construction and ideas extending over a series of years. The Patiala site is a section of fertile Punjab plain. In the Punjab, flatness does not equate with lack of identity, which here is embedded in small natural adjustments and man-made changes; rivers, drainage, towns, roads set against and echoing the colours of the earth. The particularity relates to plan and low sectional adjustment, banked earth, raised causeways, formed from the earth around it. The mountains always stand in the background, a distant boundary, where the earth folds up. Choice of space is a man-made one. The enclosed university site is flat and rectangular, with a dense eucalyptus forest down one of the longer sides. The new architecture considers the whole campus as a landscape, and makes a new, more evocative natural geography out of the constituent buildings. These evoke and extend nature to form rocky heights and shaded valleys, and create a route through them from one end of the campus to the other. The project exemplifies strong environmental concerns, with ample provision of cooling and shade, and references to Indian design typologies and walled gardens. A new covered walkway link everything for pedestrians, reversing the circulation pattern of the site. The Learning Centre is positioned towards the eastern end of the campus and forms its iconic gateway. The main student residence 1 is located at the western end, pulling the main route down to that end of the site. The second 500 bed student residence 2 is positioned between them. The other facilities, along with existing buildings, stand along this ‘route through nature’, offering students and staff the opportunity to progress through the Patiala campus in a radically new way; protected from the weather whilst enjoying all the amenities of nature. The first phase of student residence 1 is now complete. An arrangement of ‘L’ shaped towers rises from the ground to provide 2000 student rooms and common-room spaces. Together, they make their own geometry, facing different directions of the compass within the planted paradise of a rectangular walled garden. Questing and exploring the horizon like handsome chess pieces on a board, the towers are linked by the podium which shields reception, gym and dining spaces below. A giant staircase leads from the ground at either end. A first floor walkway makes social connections and when the planting is complete, it will be like walking through a forest canopy. Each block is a clipped rectangle on plan with a courtyard indent. Leading from the entrance within each block, a sequence of double height common rooms are interlinked across the section. Outward facing bedrooms have screened balconies. This is an architecture of solid geometric forms made with single materials- alternately solid and penetrable screens running across Piranesi-like blocks in the sunlight. The four completed units are covered externally with red GRC jail screen colour matched to red agra sandstone- the screen pattern is derived from the plan moves within the building.