Craft, Technology and Design Centre, The Daly College, Indore

The design for the CDTC building attempts to fit into and reflect its context in the verdant campus of the Daly College in Indore which is a 140 year old residential school set in an 120 acre campus abundant in natural as well as historic built heritage. Designed by Sir Swinton Jacob in the Indo Saracenic style, the marble main building and the older brick boarding houses display the typical Indianized elements like chhatris, domes, arches & decorative bands and cornices to otherwise formally laid out plans & massing more evocative of formal European sensibilities.

The centre was conceived to be a building which provided a stimulating environment in the form of spaces, both enclosed and open, which were interactive & engender exploratory learning. The design is an introverted building with activity spaces built around courtyards and open sided corridors :  evolving from and providing a coherence of organizational & architectural character with  the existing old buildings, while  providing for spillover of activities into adjoining open spaces as  a climatically apt response given the pleasant climate of the Malwa plateau.

       A material vocabulary incorporating exposed brick massing with decorative banding in fair faced concrete at various levels, stylized window surrounds, sills and canopies reminiscent of jharokhas, concrete & mild steel trellises and jali parapets , and skyline establishing elements and masses– all provide a continuity of material and style from the older buildings while being contemporized to a modern appearance.