Fact File
Location: Patiala, Punjab
Size: 30200 sq m
Principal Architects: Niall McCullough, Valerie Mulvin, Ruth O’Herlihy and Coran O’Connor
Photography by: Christian Richters

Thapar University’s student housing facility, designed by Dublin-based Mccullough Mulvin Architects in Patiala, is inspired by the red sandstone native to the region. The first phase of student housing at Thapar University delivers space for 1200 students in four towers (with another three towers under construction) around a new public space on the Patiala campus. The L-shaped towers are visually connected by an elevated garden podium, which shades the public spaces and pavilions beneath the intense heat of the Indian sun. Each of the towers contains generous double-height and interlocking social spaces on all floors, while all bedrooms have access to a private sun-screened balcony.

The student residences are conceived as one anchor of the overall masterplan, linked to the “Learning Center” by a shaded walkway that connects the main teaching buildings of the campus. Looking at traditional buildings where shade and privacy are created with jaali screens around verandahs or by cutting down into the ground, we created artificial geography by creating a podium level linking our towers, under which all kinds of social exchange could take place. We wanted to create a specific sense of place for students to live together on a range of scales, from the individual to the community.

Using GRC (glass-reinforced concrete), locally manufactured, and translating the red ochre soil of Punjab into a filigree of red GRC screens, a unitary massing is created that lets light through to balconies and allows the massive concrete structures to read clearly from the social spaces to create a strong background rhythm to daily life and patterns. We try to understand the place and what is unique about it. Hence, he drew inspiration from islands of calm and reflection, generally inside walled gardens, courtyards, and buildings, in contrast to the populous cities of India crammed with people in tight spaces. Thapar University’s campus is a microcosm of the city beyond its gates, producing a series of places that alternate between buzzing and calm.