Spotlight on Educational Spaces: Crescent School of Architecture by ArchitectureRED 

At the Crescent School of Architecture designed by ArchitectureRED in Chennai, all the spaces allow for collective working and gathering.   

Curated by: Tanaya Pednekar 
Photographs: Fazal Hussain, Lakshiminaraayanan and Smrithi M Kulkarni; courtesy ArchitectureRED 

The site and design intent

The Crescent School of Architecture occupies a relatively small portion of the 60-acre university campus in Vandalur, Chennai. Any architecture school requires spaces that allow its users to work in multiple ways, with a programme that is both extroverted and introverted. Given this, the design envisioned studio spaces, lecture halls and administration areas, augmented by ‘de-programmed’ spaces for collective working and gathering.

The spatial configuration

A limited space and a large programme were reconciled by creating a shared piazza that extends the urban structure of the university campus into the school, and flows through an open stilt area to the edge of a reserved forest. Multiple accesses are on offer, including an open yet shaded access to the first floor. Instead of extruding a courtyard vertically, the ground plane is multiplied, staggered at each level and overlapped — creating an additional ‘new ground’ at every floor level. This continuous, stepped void acts as a diagonal courtyard and functions as a congregational and social space.

Each studio space opens onto an adjoining double-height terrace — offering the possibility of an open studio or an open exhibition/review space. Design studios placed adjacent to one another can be transformed into one large space to host shared classes. Each design studio also accommodates a mezzanine level that houses its respective lecture hall.

The highlights

The open spaces at the ground floor reinforce the connection between the school building and the campus. This connection infiltrates the structure, enhancing its experience in the hope of giving birth to a new system where users can take charge and re-configure spaces based on their own specific purposes.

Fact File

Project: Crescent School of Architecture
Location: Vandalur, Chennai
Area: 1,25,000 sq ft
Principal architects: Biju Kuriakose and Kishore Panikkar
Project architects: Kani Pandian, Yasir Azami, Gero Rajan, Jagadesh, Chandana Ramesh, Reshma Chandrashekar, Syed Munavar and Shashank Muralidharan