Studio ALT
Set within a 125-acre organic farm in Bilasya, Kathwada, two creative practices—hand-painted ceramics and bespoke speaker design—converge. The result is a design gallery that is layered, adaptable, and resistant to singular definition. Its architecture reflects this plurality through exposed brick, concrete, and steel, negotiating the intersection of material and spatial dualities.
The robust external mass sits in contrast to an internal tectonic lightness, recalling Henri Labrouste’s Bibliothèque Nationale de France. This duality informed the foundational approach of the project, balancing nostalgia and innovation while sensitively reconciling a brief for an exposed material palette. It draws from Brutalism and contemporary industrial design, allowing the gallery to hold space for both public display and private creative practice, and thus generate a layered and tactile dialogue between the built form, wood-crafted speakers, and vibrant ceramics.
The program combines commercial, institutional, and residential functions within a cohesive spatial framework organized around a central axis. The spatial sequence begins with curved steps beside an existing mango tree, leading to the entrance. From the outset, this axis guides an entrance sequence that is indirect and deliberately elongated, transforming arrival into a measured progression. At the heart of the building, a central hall rises through three levels, serving as the primary gallery space while allowing multiple functions to coexist without hierarchy. A southern wing accommodates guest rooms and essential amenities for the residencies. Recessed alcoves display ceramic works and integrated speaker installations. Mezzanine studios and the library overlook the space through narrow bridges, creating moments of intimacy within the larger volume and facilitating a continuous dialogue throughout the gallery. While the plan reads as orthodox and symmetrical, sectional shifts introduce spatial complexity through variations in volume, interwoven levels, and calibrated skylights, thereby transforming the rigidity of the movement into a dynamic spatial experience.
The project employs two distinct structural systems: a load-bearing masonry system articulated with arched beams, and an independent steel truss spanning the central nave. The deliberate separation of the two systems clarifies the building’s tectonic order while allowing each system to assert a distinct identity. The mezzanine uses jack-arch flooring, while above it, a reinforced concrete roof punctuated by vaulted skylights works with a steel portal frame spanning the nave. A narrow slit along the pitched roof allows hot air to escape, enabling passive cooling within the gallery during the region’s intense summers. Double slabs and jack-arch construction reduce heat transfer to the lower levels, while the thermal mass of the brick walls helps maintain cooler interior temperatures even during scorching afternoons.
By openly expressing the construction systems, the architecture allows the building’s tectonic logic to become an integral part of the spatial experience. The gallery orchestrates a layered, immersive architectural journey, moving beyond conventional spatial norms. It frames a dialogue between making, material, and void, allowing architecture itself to participate in the act of creation. In this collision of contrasts and dualities, the building finds coherence in its plurality. It becomes both vessel and witness, accommodating two material worlds and two temporal sensibilities within a unified spatial order. It balances material solidity with a sense of openness, thus evolving as a hybrid condition, poised between the ordered procession of a church and the utilitarian logic of a factory. In this unfolding, the structure is exhibited and simultaneously becomes an exhibit in itself.
