India’s new Prestige University designed by Sanjay Puri Architects features a fully walkable angled green roof that is accessible to staff and students from the ground. The building may look like a Minecraft creation, but it’s a full university sliding seamlessly under the landscape beneath a rooftop composed of squares of green planted turf.
How did Sanjay Puri Architects fit an entire university under a hill? 250,000 square feet of floor space was efficiently packed into one building on a 32-acre campus. Prestige University will use this building for administration offices, an auditorium, lecture halls and also include a library and cafeteria.
Related: Green roof in Amsterdam leads an economic revenue model
The plan was to create an alternative to the common imposing skyline of a university. The designers gradually elevated a building up into what amounts to a small hill on top of the building on the rear south side. Prestige University is only 20 meters tall and the green roof can function as an open auditorium.
Traditional Indian architecture inspired the natural lighting for the courtyards and the north side of the building. It helps reduce energy costs and air conditioning in a climate that ranges from 86 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit eight months of the year.
Inside, there is a diagonal indoor street that splits the building and opens to interior courtyards that feature natural ventilation. The design team for this unique project included Sanjay Puri, Ruchika Gupta, Suzanna Machado, Omkar Rane and Devendra Duggad. They are all part of the award-winning Sanjay Puri Architects group.
Sanjay Puri have won renown from the LEAF Awards London Best Interior Architecture 2021, the World Architecture Festival’s Best Housing Project of the Year 2018 in Amsterdam and the World’s Best Residential Building in the LEAF Awards, London 2017, among a total of 270 national and international awards.
Images via Sanjay Puri Architects
