Can colorful interior designs ignite creativity and enhance indoor environmental quality? To learn and grow, children need an environment that fosters freedom and exploration – these are hard to come by in today’s megacity in particular. This Garden School in Mumbai conceives this protective space, holding off the oppressive conventions and constraints of the city, for a child to be free.
Editor’s Note: “This school design in Mumbai demonstrates how a vibrant color palette and spatial planning can enhance a child’s creativity, discovery, and freedom. It achieves a delicate balance between form and function through the playful ramps, screened openings, and structural design components while staying in reference with the surrounding context.” ~ Anusha Sridhar
This Mumbai-School Fosters Exploration With Colorful Interior Designs | JDAP
Set on a tiny plot of about 450 square meters and bordered by an overgrown urban village at one end and a narrow, busy street on the other, it was clear from the start that this kindergarten would need to be a vertical one.
The available footprint, after accounting for mandatory setbacks, a staircase, and services would accommodate two classrooms at best. The team wants to maintain as much of the plot as possible as an open area at ground level to maximize play space.
The question then was of enabling the transition from ground to the elevated classrooms in as natural a manner as possible.
Very early in the design stage, we began toying with the idea of a ramp to make this transition seamless. However, an independent ramp would prove to be impractical both due to an already constrained footprint, and the possibility of the upward trudge becoming a tedium for the little girls.
It was fortuitous as we worked on the idea, that we discovered the perimeter of the soft, rounded form we were developing equaled the length of the ramp that was needed to traverse from one floor to the next.
The ramp thus developed wrapping around the classrooms, with shallowed inclines at the four corners, stair and elevator connections, to meet the floor at a large landing at the entrance to the classrooms.
Children race along the ramp, peeping into classrooms along a comfortable incline. It also turns the ramp into the primary ‘street’ that holds the school together.
Internally our team would joke about whether children would race up the ramp to the teachers’ rooms or down to the play areas – one of those two choices seemed easier, by design.
The classrooms sit in a dip leading from the floor landings. Inverted beams along the periphery of the slab allow a clean soffit all across, with also the peripheral beam forming a natural edge to the classrooms. Furthermore, the edge, with its wide steps, allows the space to host activities like drama or dance and connects to a raised podium.
Once inside the classroom, the city becomes a phantom presence – light and forms filter through the perforated metal scrim at the edge of the ramp, and the sounds of the street are dampened so the sounds of the school take over.
The ramp as the ‘internal street’ becomes the place where children from within the classroom interact with the ‘outside’ by displaying their work along the glazed walls or waving out to friends as they pass by.
Connection with the city beyond is measured and at the scale of a child. A pattern of low-height, screened openings rises and falls along the ramp’s outer edge. These are calibrated to minimize the entry of the harsh mid-day sun into the building but also serve as little windows from which children may have a view of the city or wave out at their parents across the street.
Structurally, the elevator shaft and five more columns hold up the building. The ramp cantilevers off an inverted beam, which connects to each column at different heights.
On the upper floor, an additional set of columns at the outer edge of the building gets added with a transfer floor so that column-free halls can be built above, should the building get extended by a floor or two in the future. The fifth floor, with both the inner and the outer set of columns, serves as a multifunctional space for the school.
Material finishes are simple, low maintenance, and natural wherever possible. It includes natural stone floors, hardwood for internal glass framing, and pivoted fins, with the façade largely in anodized aluminum. Moreover, color forms an important orientation device with the color of elements like ramp railings changing from floor to floor. Additionally, the external fins change over each face of the building.
Fact File
Designed by: JDAP
Project Type: Educational Architecture Design
Project Name: Garden School
Location: Mumbai
Year Built: 2024
Built-up Area: 15069.47 Sq.ft
Design Team: Avishkar Bharati [Project Architect], Apoorva Iyengar, Enid Gomez, Nikhil Sawant, Shubham Chandiwade, Sandeep Menon, Venkatesh Iyengar, Jude D’Souza
Photograph Courtesy: Niveditaa Gupta
Client: St. Charles Borromeo Trust
Interior Contractor: Santosh Vishwakarma
Structural Engineers: ITS Structures’ Consulting LLP, PS Badrinarayan
Service Engineers: MSP, Sushil Gupta, MSP; Dhaval Jhaveri, RCE
Project Managers: MSCE, Prasanta Paul, Rajkumar Deshmukh
Civil Contractors: Mehta Jaising Builders
Façade Contractors: Concetti Architectural Commodities
Source: Archdaily
Firm’s Website Link: JDAP
Firm’s Instagram Link: JDAP
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