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The design was developed during India's harsh and sudden Covid lockdown, when people were yearning to meet again and share ideas in person. Further, in an age where most reading is done on digital screens, we provide complementary function to a space that houses physical books. At a programmatic level we redefine the library as a house of knowledge and entertainment for community, providing a distinct and flexible space for adults and children to come together around workshops, film screenings, book clubs, author readings and more. At a formal level the design draws from the particular memory of reading a book in the shade of a tree. Existing concrete columns are reimagined as trees, with concentric bookshelves supported on arched branches that merge above, connecting the entire forest.
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The design borrows heavily from the beautiful canopy formed by the ficus and gulmohur trees found on the adjacent street.
Steel & timber branches intertwine overhead, forming delicate woven meshes below the beams, recreating the sense of walking under trees with dappled light filtering through canopies above. Custom terrazzo flooring tiles with chips of marble and green glass create abstract patterns of scattered leaves.
The Cricket Club is an elegantly restrianed Art Deco building, more in softness of form than detail. The form of the trees references the cantilevered geometry of the colonnade along the verandah that fringes the historic cricket ground of the main club.
The principal material used for the library is timber, with the windows in yellow cedar and the furniture in western hemlock. In India it is very difficult to find native species which are sustainably harvested, so we used Canadian timber from FSC sources. The embodied carbon captured in the wood far outweighs that released in its production and transport. We have enlarged the windows and decluttered the space in front of them, besides keeping a large proportion of them openable. This achieves an increase in both natural light and ventilation across two facades, reducing the reliance of the library upon artificial light and mechanical ventilation. The enlarged windows face east and north, avoiding the harsh glare of the south west.
The entire plan of the library is laid out like a formal garden, led primarily by considerations of natural light and structural grid. A "boulevard" references the foliage-canopied street outside. Around the central trees are freestanding bookshelves in circular hedge-like arrangements. Bibliophiles browse, thumbing books within the hedges, before taking their chosen books to the lounge chairs and sofa benches by the windows for longer reads. Care has been taken to ensure no bookshelf in the open space is taller than 1.2m. This allows maximum natural light to permeate and while creating semi-private nooks to browse and read within. For adults, this height allows visual connectivity across the entire space when standing. However it creates a very different perception of the space for children, from whose vantage the meandering space between the circular bookshelves is playful, almost labyrinthine. We expanded our brief, convincing the client to let us repurpose an adjacent underutilised Zumba studio for use as a mutli-activity room, which brings people together. The redesign allows the space to revert back to a dance studio when needed, with oak flooring, flush mirrored storage for books and stacking furniture, and a large screen TV, all under a ceiling of undulating timber slats that speak of dance.
With this refurbishment we have transformed an underused existing library space on the fourth floor of a rather unremarkable office building into a vibrant Forest of Knowledge and an activity space for a community. The design is innovative, while being cognisant and respectful of its context within a heritage precinct between beautiful tree-lined streets. The success of the project is borne out by the greatly increased footfall and appreciation that we have had from members.
Studio Hinge was founded in 2014 by Pravir Sethi, and the practice has since produced works of scales ranging from furniture, lighting, interiors and architecture, in India and abroad.
The outlook of the studio is contemporary, with acknowledgment of context often winking at the past. The work is craft-orientated, yet often realised by modern fabrication. Like storytelling, the design is contextual, has a narrative, can be witty, moving, or both. It evolves, evokes, revealing new turns at every reading.
The firm has been on the AD100 list since 5 years and has been awarded and published in India and internationally, with recognition from Dezeen, Createurs Design Awards, World Youth Designer Forum, etc.
Before setting up studio HINGE, Pravir studied at the Academy of Architecture in Mumbai and the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, and worked with some of the top names in India and the UK including David Chipperfield, Marks Barfield & Sanjay Puri Architects.
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