Vastushilpa Sangath covers Indian school with banana leaf-shaped roof

A red aluminium roof modelled on banana leaves shelters Shiv Nader School, completed by architecture studio Vastushilpa Sangath in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, India.

Run by the philanthropic body Shiv Nader Foundation, the international school and its campus are designed to accommodate 1850 students in the state's capital, Chennai.

Vastushilpa Sangath was asked to create a school that would integrate with the site's existing ecology and accommodate outdoor learning, leading it to design a "porous and breathable" campus that weaves around 1,400 mature trees.

To achieve this, the studio began by drawing a looping path around significant trees, prioritising species depending on their age, medicinal value and ecological appropriateness.

"This loop became the organisational diagram for the project," said lead architect Rajeev Kathpalia.

Mapped out along this pathway is a collection of small, low-slung classroom buildings broken up into modules. Shiv Nader School's sweeping terracotta-coloured roof rises above them, providing shade and outdoor learning areas under its overhangs.

Pre-fabricated offsite, the roof is made of aluminium modules shaped like banana leaves, with horizontal grooves running across each one. The roofs are inlaid with solar panels and generate a third of the school's electricity.

According to the studio, the design reimagines the region's tiled roofs with pronounced overhangs, as well as Chennai's use of verandas and semi-covered spaces often for learning.

"We took inspiration from this idea of an open classroom, one which birds, animals, and nature could pass through," Kathpalia told Dezeen. "To us the veranda also embodies a certain idea of freedom and the potential of liminal spaces in education."

Shiv Nader School's classrooms have been designed by the studio to resemble small homes and are clustered to form neighbourhoods.

Floors are made with local granite, while timber reclaimed from dismantled ships is used as cladding.

The blocks are independent of the roof, which is supported by a pair of columns on either side of a corridor. A service trench runs under this corridor, which also serves as the foundation for the columns.

The wider Shiv Nader School project also includes the revival of an existing lake, which is used as a learning resource and acts as a reservoir where surface run-off and roof water is harvested.

This meets all of the school's domestic water needs, making it a water-independent campus. The studio said this is critical in a city such as Chennai that, despite the high rainfall, is under water stress.

The school is being developed in three phases, a strategy Vastushilpa Sangath says enables gradual growth and minimises ecological disruption while ensuring financial feasibility.  The pre-fabrication of many of the building's structural components has also reduced disturbance to the site's flora and fauna.

Other recent school projects featured on Dezeen include India's Sai Kirupa Special School, also in the state of Tamil Nadu, designed by local studio Biome Environmental Solutions and a rammed-earth extension in France by NTSA Architectes.

The photography is by Edmund Sumner.

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