Tata Dhan Academy, Madurai March '05 - March '08 Winner : 20th JK-Cement Architect of the Year 2010

The academy is a management training institute that provides professional education in rural development. In keeping with its mission, the architecture builds on a traditional local vocabulary, so that those who enter the facility will instantly feel at home. The design began with a study of the regional prototype of Chettinad architecture to understand its planning, scale, detailing and materiality, which was then reinterpreted to suit the spatial and functional needs of the school. The site layout picks up on the way villages are distributed across a region, with clusters from which interconnecting roads spring out. The individual clusters grow as radiating squares and interlocking courtyards, halls sided with verandahs that open onto landscaped courtyards maintaining transparency along one axis of every space. The vocabulary of tile roofs, exposed stone walls and pillars, bright cement oxide floors and traditional reed mats render the complex as a subtle yet striking composition of shade, light, and colour, interwoven with landscape.