What do you bear in mind most about your college? Is it the lecture rooms or the open areas, the amphitheatres the place you had your annual days or the basketball courts/soccer fields/grounds the place you spent hours taking part in with your mates? In a way, what we be taught outdoors sticks with us greater than what we do in lecture rooms. 

Rabindranath Tagore established the Santiniketan in 1901, an academic establishment the place college students might be taught within the lap of nature. In truth, educating was executed within the historical Indian Gurukul system within the open beneath the bushes. 

The Northstar Faculty in Rajkot is an try to return to our roots, the place studying will not be confined inside 4 partitions. Impressed by the gurus in historical India and wanting to duplicate that type of open studying the place college students are related to nature in each house, Mohit Patel began this college in 2016. Whereas finding out at Harvard, the 38-year-old realised that the best way colleges are run right now is in direct battle with the best way youngsters be taught.

Set throughout a sprawling 15-acre campus, the college has extra out of doors areas than indoor and lays nice emphasis on local weather and sustainability, that includes built-in water administration techniques, an power environment friendly structure permitting nature gentle and cooling, and use of pure and native supplies.

Out of the 15 acres, the educational blocks solely make up 2 acres. The remaining 13 acres are play areas, cricket fields, swimming swimming pools, athletic tracks, fruit orchards and extra.

Together with designing the curriculum, equal significance was given to the structure, to make sure that Mohit’s imaginative and prescient was delivered to life. It was executed so with architects Shanmugam and associates, who ensured that the college was ethereal, with a number of open areas and offered a snug setting for college students.

Finding out within the lap of nature

The concept for this college really started as a category undertaking in 2012, when Mohit was pursuing a Masters in Training at Harvard College. The undertaking was on designing a college. Mohit checked out it from two views, one being curriculum and the opposite, house design.

“What I considered after I labored on the undertaking was, how can we design studying experiences? One other necessary query I had was how do you match these experiences into an area design? I conceived the undertaking for a college in India and never America,” Mohit tells The Higher India. 

After returning to India, he began conceptualising and fascinated with how he might convert what was on paper into actuality. After engaged on the curriculum, Mohit joined fingers with the group at Shanmugam associates who labored on the house and constructing design.

Mohit explains that he was clear that the college ought to look “nothing like a college we’ve been used to ”. He wished youngsters to spend extra time outdoors the classroom than contained in the classroom.

With this pitch in thoughts, Santosh Shanmugam and Raja Krishnan D, principal architects on the structure agency, began planning the college. They determined to return to the roots and design an area the place college students can be taught from nature. 

“We began working with the view that if you enter this college, you must get a sense that you simply’re related to nature and open in each classroom and house. In a big house like this, we first began with a small portion, a classroom after which multiplied it throughout the campus. We designed every classroom with gardens on both facet, to have good cross air flow. Since Rajkot will get highly regarded, we integrated small jali screens to chill the air or block the mud,” provides Santhosh. 

The architects have interspersed panorama in each house attainable. You’re welcomed by 

Gulmohar bushes on the entrance which create a cover. There’s a central courtyard which is impressed by the stepped wells of Gujarat which serves an area for courses, performances, and has greenery integrated via creepers and vines. Every classroom has its personal non-public backyard and an open courtyard, the place courses too might be carried out, a la Santiniketan.  

By having gardens on either side, a microclimate is created in every classroom. This retains the temperature decrease than the skin setting. The home windows within the lecture rooms immediately speak in confidence to the backyard.

The steps within the courtyard double up as a stage or place for rehearsals throughout occasions. The open corridors additionally include ample seating for college students to lounge and work together with lecturers.

The architects have used native, indigenous supplies like Kota stones and native limestones. Their mission was clear: Each house a toddler is in have to be one with nature, be it a classroom, employees room, the bathrooms, courtyard or the play areas. They’ve inexperienced, vegetated screens on the primary flooring outdoors lecture rooms to provide a backyard feeling, and in addition cut back mud.

Each window or door opens out right into a inexperienced house or backyard. The varsity additionally has a horticulture program that teaches college students the method of rising wildlife, and is aimed to foster a deep-rooted reference to earth and local weather. The fruit orchards provide a hands-on expertise for the scholars with the setting.

A sustainable mannequin for waste administration

The varsity additionally has a waste administration system for water, meals, and sewage. All of the kitchen waste and meals waste is reused as manure inside the campus. All of the water can also be recycled and there’s a Sewage Remedy Plant (STP) within the college. Rainwater can also be harvested and used for recharging the borewells. 

“The positioning topography slopes in direction of culvert and stream. So the rainwater is of course directed in direction of the borewell for groundwater recharge which finally goes to the Aji river. We’ve executed this by conserving the topsoil of the campus loamy to offer for satisfactory rainwater drainage. We’re additionally constructing a rainwater assortment and percolation tank,” provides Mohit.

The architects add that they designed the campus in a approach the place utilization of electrical energy is lowered. Raja explains that you simply don’t want a lot lighting throughout daytime and air-con is used solely in summers. Their design ensures that the college is power environment friendly.

“We at all times really feel that structure ought to maintain the local weather by design and planning quite than by any mechanical gear. That’s how the constructing ages properly, feels properly, feels snug. In a standard college, you might have corridors and lecture rooms on all sides. Our courses are designed in modules, so there’s no class which touches one another. A classroom will get gentle from each side and is of course lit. Our corridors by no means should be lit up as a result of there’s a lot pure gentle and since it’s open,” says Raja.

Northstar has 500+ college students and 80 lecturers. Every class has a pupil power of 20-25, maximising the world and facilities obtainable for every pupil.

Mohit’s concept is for youngsters to get pleasure from college. Every part else is secondary, he says. The varsity doesn’t have exams until Class 10, and college students should not pressured into working the rat race of IITs, medical entrance teaching from Class 8 itself. A faculty, he says, shouldn’t be considered a method to realize admission to a reputed faculty, it must be a whole expertise of its personal.

“College students must be snug and blissful in school. So long as youngsters are feeling blissful being in class, every part else goes to observe. Studying is a byproduct of being curious, of being blissful, being in good environment. That comes from the lecturers, our relationship with our friends, the constructing, the setting; with every part. We would like college students to be taught, develop into good human beings, imbibe vital considering. Education in itself is an expertise, not a method to do one thing else,” says Mohit. 

The aim and imaginative and prescient of the college is to assist college students ‘discover their true north’.

Raja says that he used to hate going to highschool as he was burdened with homework and exams. “Now, I actually need to return to highschool and do my education at Northstar,” he laughs. 

Edited by Padmashree Pande