The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : IIT-Madras plans high-rise hostel

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Saturday, Dec 20, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

IIT-Madras plans high-rise hostel

Priscilla Jebaraj

CHENNAI: By the end of 2010, students of the IIT-Madras could be looking out over the treetops of their campus jungle from their hostel windows. The institute’s first high-rise hostel, spanning seven floors , is expected to come up over the next two years, at a cost of more than Rs. 53 crore.

“There are plans to demolish Mandakini hostel and rebuild it as a high-rise structure in two years,” dean of students V.G. Idichandy told The Hindu on Wednesday. “Mandakini is in a low-lying area and floods easily during rains. It was flooded this year as well,” he said. A meeting, scheduled for next week, will discuss the architectural plans for the new building.

The new block will have 800 rooms for men students as against the 200 rooms now available at the hostel. Since the IIT-M currently has a surplus of 400 rooms, it will be able to tide over the period when Mandakini will be unavailable, despite the pressure from the increasing enrolment, Dr. Idichandy said.

The rising proportion of women students has also prompted the institute to build a new women’s hostel, to add 500-600 rooms, probably by demolishing the hostel Sarayu, which has a capacity of 250, and rebuilding it on the same site. “We don’t have room to keep adding without demolishing,” said Guhan Jayaraman, the first warden of the other women’s hostel Sharavathi, which has a capacity of 550.

He was speaking at a function to honour Gururaj and Jaishree Deshpande, whose donations helped in the construction of Sharavathi in 2001. The alumni couple also funded the Centre for Systems and Devices, which has been renamed as the Deshpande Centre for Communication Networks.

“When I took charge [at Sharavathi], there was excess space, since we had only 350 women students. By the time I left [in 2004], it was almost full,” Dr. Jayaraman said. The new Sarayu hostel for women will be considered after plans for the new Mandakini hostel for men have been finalised, but construction of both may happen on a parallel timeline.

According to the tender documents on the IIT-M website, each room of the new Mandakini high-rise will have an area of 100 square feet and will contain a granite table top for computers, a built-in wardrobe, lofts and bookshelves.

The new hostel is expected to have a total plinth area of 26,400 square metres.

The approximate cost of construction of all the blocks is Rs. 53.1 crore. The funding will be borne by the government, since it expects the IITs to increase enrolment, Dr. Idichandy said.

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