St. Joseph’s College of Law

Project Name: St. Joseph’s College of Law
Authors: BetweenSpaces

CITATION

Urban institutions across India are subscribing to a vertical organisation of space as urban land increasingly becomes inaccessible and expensive. This multifunctional institutional project assimilated the layered and specific demands from the project brief into a single, vertical block. Nonetheless, in doing so, the quiet block on the outside is contrasted by an active, energised section within.

The larger halls demanded for congregation occupy the bottom of the building, where a concrete A-frame is the widest. As the frame narrows, the smaller and more segregated functions are layered towards the top, making the structure incrementally more efficient and creating a system that responds to the functional space within – an economy if material, means and space. The structural strategy is amalgamated with the architectural logic of the interior space.

There is a certain severity in the articulation of the facade and the evident struggle in finding a way to respond to a busy urban street on one side, and an open institutional space on the other plays through. This reluctant engagement with the street is contrasted by the larger openings that orient the building, experientially, to the campus. However, the street facade remains benign.

As institutional become more insular, disengaged and vertical, this project exemplifies the power of an architectural/structural section employed in the articulation of the interior space for dynamic use, multi-programme overlaps and the unpredictability of the future institutional demands making the section generative of quality architecture and therefore, St. Joseph’s College of Law by BetweenSpaces is awarded a Citation in The Merit List.