About the site

Abandoned quarry sites form a large part of the urban and suburban spaces, especially in Gujarat and Rajasthan. Quarries reflect the exploitation of natural resources using violent methods such as dynamiting to the extent that the landscape becomes distressed. Such landscapes offer a renewed opportunity to put back the ecological process in order by landscape reshaping which is favorable for the ecosystem, local economy, and improvement of people’s living standards. In that definition, the post-industrial landscape has the potential of making us reflect upon the value of such a place.

Mapping The Site

The basalt quarry was mapped with the help of drone (Lidar). After obtaining a height map from the drone image, the points were extruded to make a three dimensional model. A textured map was overlayed on the three dimensional model to obtain accurate information about the site.

Project Requirements

1. Library
2. Storage
3.Molecular biology laboratory
4. Collection room
5. Reception area
6. Visitors area
7. Exhibition area
8. Cafe area
9. Toilet
10. Offices

Concept

The site is full is damage. But there are a lot of spots where renewal has started taking place. The central idea is to create a building in such a way that once people enter inside, most of the time they see renewal happening outside.

Design Decisions

There were multiple things that we wanted to achieve in this project.

1. The project is all on the ground floor.

2. Since the site is already damaged, it is necessary that we don’t further damage it. Hence, the building should have a minimum footprint as well as it should need minimum cut and filled.

3. Different spaces need different amount light conditions. Hence the opening should be accordingly.

4. To minimize non-renewable energy usage, we need to maximize air flow through the building and minimize heating.

Process

The first step was to find out areas required for each space and the percentage of opening it should have.
Spaces like laboratories work best in artificial lights and hence require very few openings. On the other hand, exhibition space and visitors. The center can have lot opening. An interrelationship is also set between each space. This decides which spaces should be besides which one.

Based on step 1, an algorithm was made and after 4000 iteration we got this layout, such that all the interrelationships were satisfied and a minimum area was used, as we wanted to have minimum damage.

The third step was marking spots where renewal is taking place. Each color represents a different process of renewal. According to the concept, the opening should be such that most of the time we see these areas.

As the last step, a generating algorithm was created that created the shell structure with an opening in direction of marked spaces which could move on the site. Optimization was done on the following criteria:

1. Heat gain
2. Incident solar radiation
3. Plinths
4. The volume of filling required

Isometric View of the Building