NATURE AND LEARNING – Vana Gurukula or Abhyasa

In the tradition of the ancestral education system and its relation to the environment the site offers a unique opportunity. An opportunity of locating the place of learning in the ‘vana’ – the forest. The primal relationship between man, nature and learning has always been of living in harmony in our socio-cultural context. Maintaining this viewpoint, the design addresses the location of the new blocks as clearings in the forest where the blocks are made transparent so that they almost tend to disappear despite their physical presence. From outside the reflection of the trees on the glass (almost all coconut trees that could be kept have been retained) never lets one forget the forest and from inside these blocks the interior spaces become almost one with the trees. This sets the cue for never letting one forget one’s roots whatever the nature of the activity.

The Design Strategy

• Diagonal thrust of site, which opens up views of the forest (it is not built on) to emphasize the concept of learning within and from nature.
• Keeping the axis to the Samadhi sacrosanct by diverting pedestrian movement onto the main bridges / connectors/ plinths along the street towards the IEM block.
• The periphery of the site, which is in immediate proximity of the IEM block, was treated as a screen wall that serves the purpose of forming a threshold for the three blocks. It serves as a screen, as a connector, The 3 blocks were seen as independent units and hence were developed as separate units.
• Classrooms float above ground plane too and are transparent on both the sides – creating notion of a pavilion in the forest wherein learning takes place – an evocation of the man-nature-learning concept.
• The site characteristics and the view of ‘learning in the forest’ implied that all the blocks would hover above the terrain. High-tech blocks built of glass and metal float above the ‘forest’ literally and metaphorically.
• The ground plane that is (immediately) spatially significant to the student’s first reading of the space opens up on to the plinths of interactions, student theatres of discussion and many possibilities. This created a unique opportunity to free the ground as a natural continuum of the land as it is.
• The plinths were worked our so that the ground would naturally be modified to create areas for gathering as shaded paved areas under the splatter of the shadows of the coconut grove.