A Living Teaching Community campus concept that was close to earth, protected the environment, conserved energy and made use of the abundant sunlight and heat in Vijayawada, is a dream-come-true design for the School of Planning and Architecture, Vijayawada.
This design, prepared by the Mumbai-based Mobile Offices architect Shantanu Poredi, as part of an all-India competition, was on Saturday declared winner by Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development D. Purandeswari and presented a Rs.10 lakh cheque as prize money. This design will be adopted by the SPA, Vijayawada for constructing its building in a 25-acre site at Singhnagar or on the ITI playground campus in the city where it has been given seven acres land.
Second best design came from Brinda Somaya, also from Mumbai-based Somaya and Kalappa Consultants, and they won Rs.5 lakh as cash prize, but the contract of designing the building would be given to the first place winner and only if they reject the offer, it would go the second finalist.
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Out of 90 original aspirants, 45 were short-listed for the competition and of them 23 showed interest in participating for the second round of competition.
Five were short-list by a seven-member jury and finally the winners chosen based on a long list of parameters like adapting to eco-friendly material, local material, aesthetics, energy conservation etc.
Vijayawada has severe heat conditions and harnessing natural ventilation, making the roof and several other portions of the construction translucent made the design energy efficient by providing input to the solar energy production unit and diffusing light into all floors of the building so that lesser light was used by those working there.
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The Union Minister of State said designing eco-friendly and aesthetic, cost-effective buildings was the responsibility of the SPA students and they should come up with designs that would one day provide shelter for the downtrodden at a low cost, that Government can bear. The SPA Vijayawada Director Sohan Saha, Registrar Venkata Krishna Kumar Sadhu, Associate Professor Ayon Kumar Tarafdar and Assistant Professor Nagaraju Kaja were present in addition to Daketi Srinivas, a faculty member.
Students displayed their art and dance skills by presenting a dance ballet in traditional attire.