The Vidyodaya School has, over the last 25 years, created an exemplary model by shifting the focus beyond the Curricular Discourse into practices of creating holistic micro-environments. The campus is a mini haven for its students converting a small hill into learning rooms, enveloped by a thick grove of trees. The students and the teaching staff alike participate in a host of activities, authored by the school itself, to dedicatedly nurture this environment.
RGB was fortunate to have been asked to participate in the school’s ambition to develop an extension for their lively Kindergarten Program. There were two possibilities that evolved out of the interaction between the management and the team of designers.
The first possibility took advantage of the hilly terrain and created an extension of the school from within its existing building, with a space jutting out the upper floor, and consequently creating a stepped activity court underneath. This framed the entrance to the old building while adding a playful façade of interactive spatial interventions towards the larger entrance plaza and the main playground of the school.
The second possibility developed out of an enquiry into a more restrained form. The result almost disappeared into the foliage of the existing trees, as the main learning spaces hovered over an existing small play area adjoining the kindergarten block, while not disturbing either the extant equipment nor the plentiful trees on site.