Project: Integrated Pack-house and Cold Storage Unit
Site: Dharampura (Dist: Tapi) Gujarat, India
The design borrows from the ‘grid’ of cropping patterns and the fields in the landscape. The grid gives rise to a system of organisation on site and structure for the building. The building then inhabits this structural grid in the form of a masonry box which borrows its colours from the landscape. The empty spaces on the plot are given back to the clients as agricultural land. The set-back along the road can be used as test plots and the inner courtyard on the south side was imagined as a mango or a chikoo grove which would help in cutting the sun light on the south.
For use of colour, we looked to the land and plant material around site. We noticed how it undergoes a change in a colour range of yellows and green through the year, with different seasons and crop cycles. The ‘box’ borrows yellow and green from the fields so that it belongs to the landscape. The colour yellow is used to articulate the main surfaces of the building that constitute the box. Green is used to highlight the depth as seen in architectural features, projections and details. We have used the colour blue in the sky court to emphasise a visual connection with the sky.
As a result, we get a building that has a clean, sanitised, white space on the inside and an expression of the colours of the land on the outside. The front facade gives the architecture a rhythm and helps to scale it down to the sugarcane plantation and the vast agricultural landscape.
Photography by: Sebastian Zachariah/ PHX India © ADRG
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