A curvaceous brick roof covers a children's library in rural Maharashtra, India, situated in a plot between existing buildings and the school boundary. Designed by Mumbai-based studio Sameep Padora & Associates, the architects were inspired by Geodesic structures built by an engineer for a few of the school buildings at the site and vaulted brick ceilings from the 16th century in Catalonia. 

Dubbed as Maya Somaiya Library, the school was built at a linear site that almost determines the linear footprint of the building to adjust the program for the chosen site.

"Alluding to the impetus that children have towards landscape over a building, we imagined the library building to be a formal extension of the ground plane," said the architects. 

The studio placed study spaces inside and playing space on the roof, which provides an easy walk on it. Due to the limited teaching resources available in the larger vicinity, the architects needed the inspiring spatial experience to be a magnet to attract students and hopefully other residents from the nearby settlements after school hours. 

"On our first visit to the site it was interesting to see Geodesic structures built by an engineer for a few of the school buildings, we were somewhat encouraged by this to pursue a project that followed from a construction intelligence," the studio added.

"We hence parsed through several possible material configurations ranging from concrete shells to brick vaults for building this ‘architectural landscape’."

"At this point we were captivated by the material efficiencies of the Catalan tile vault from the 16th century, it’s use by Gustavino in the early 19th century and finally the incredible details from the work of Eladio Dieste from the mid-twentieth century." 

"While working with the specific site condition we used Rhino Vault developed by the Block Research Group at the ETH to articulate a pure compression form for the project."

The library lies at the intersection of a student’s daily routine and the building became a pavilion accessed from multiple sides with students potentially engaging with books while traversing through the library or over it.

The library interior has a flexible layout that allows varied spatial & seating configurations, a floor stool system towards the edges for a more intimate study area and towards the centre, tables and stools for collaborative study. The self-structured window bays are striated profiles for increased stability with economical window section sizes.

"The construction technology for the project also makes a case to reexamine the age-old binaries of the global and local as being in opposition," added the architects.

"The regional or the local within the South Asian paradigm typically manifests within strict formal constraints of the style in memory. This is often at the expense of material efficiencies."

The architects state that their efforts to search for a material and construction efficiency in brick tile looked to leverage the networks of knowledge that their practices are situated in, allowing them to enrich the regional or local through the extended capacities of the global.

"In using principles ranging from the Catalan Tile Vaulting system to the compression ring detail from the work of Eladio Dieste in Uruguay, to using a form finding software plug -in made in Switzerland the library is a resultant of not only lessons learnt from various geographic locations but also various lessons through time/history," they added.

Site plan 

Site plan with routes

Floor plan

Section

Elevation

Concept diagram-knowledge

Concept diagram-load transfer

Concept diagram-details

All images © Edmund Sumner

All drawings © Sameep Padora & Associates

> via Sameep Padora & Associates