RIA · 2022 · I · 001

The brief arrived through a referral in the second week of December, and the practice took it on a month later. The site sat on a corner plot in Tambaram, bordered on three sides by older single-storey housing, and the client asked only for a building that would stand for fifty years and be used for fifteen. The first sketch went up on the studio wall a week after the site visit; the last drawing left the studio twenty-six months later.

The plan reads as a long bar facing the south light, with a courtyard cut through the middle and circulation tucked behind a deep verandah on the inner edge. The vocabulary is the one the practice has used since 2011 — local red brick, lime-plastered walls, exposed concrete lintels, kota stone flooring, and recycled wood for joinery. There are no imported materials in the building. The roof is a thin RCC slab with a layered overhang for the southwest monsoon.

The building handed over in the summer of the third year, and the first cohort of students arrived three weeks after the partner's final walkthrough. The practice has visited the building twice a year since, on the dates the partner books for every completed project — a habit the studio keeps regardless of whether the client invites or not.