How should a life-sciences and bio-technology college look? Eccentrically colourful, splattered with avant garde shapes and with a gravity-mocking façades? You wouldn’t think so. But that is the precise reason why Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Mumbai picked Planet 3 Studios to do up a 35,000 sq. feet area of a pre-existing industrial plot within the campus.
Kalhan and Santha Gour Mattoo with their design team made it a point to go all out and build a space that the students would associate with but not be bogged down by. Non-linearity rules the interiors, giving it a feel of a garage belonging to supremely free-thinking artists. Some spots of detailing lean towards the true purpose of this place, like the brilliant façade that apes the tilt of tall grass in the wind, but the rest is just glorious quaintness – there is a lotus-shaped crown, sitting places that are shaped like Neanderthal feet and stick-figure arms, evena staircase with ‘Edward Scissorhands’ railing. It is like walking into a craft project that is alive.
