To let the future architects think freely and out-of-the-box is a mission the Asian School of Architecture and Design Innovation (ASADI) is focused on. The founder, staff and students here let their imagination flow without ties.
A campus sprawling over a lush green two acres, ASADI began functioning in June 2013 with a batch of 13 students, offering a five-year Bachelor degree in Architecture (BArch). Situated on the Silversand island in one of the busiest spots in Ernakulam district, Vyttila, the campus is easily accessible to those in and outside the city.
Subjects
The school is affiliated to MG University, Kerala, and follows the norms of the Council of Architecture, the country’s apex regulatory body for architecture. Apart from courses in Basic Design, Architectural Design, Visual Art, History of Architecture, Mathematics, Building Services, Human Settlements, Landscape Architecture to Sustainable Architecture, Building Bylaws, Design for Disaster Mitigation and Management, the five-year course also includes a one-year mandatory internship under a professional mentor in the fourth year, and a thesis and project submission in their fifth year.
Eligibility
Any student with an aggregate of 50 per cent marks in Class XII who has studied Mathematics as one of the subjects with a minimum score of 100 out of 200 in National Aptitude Test for Architecture (NATA) is eligible to apply for BArch here. “However, one must clear the personal interview where the candidate needs to prove their passion to be an architect,” says BR Ajit, Chairman and Director, ASADI. Ajit who has been practising as an architect for more than three decades now, says, “If the country has not been able to produce more than 20-30 genuine architects out of the 20,000-30,000 architecture graduates, it is because of a flawed system governed by rules and techniques. Architecture is not technology or Mathematics. It is an art that should know no boundary to practice in, which is the aim of this institution.” Ajit is also the resource person of Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Department of Power, Government of India; expert member, Green Building Guidance team, Public Works Department, Government of Kerala and the Chairman of Indian Green Building Council, Kochi chapter.
Infrastructure
The school has an eco-friendly building with four floors and an open quadrangle at the entrance. A library, cafeteria, clean toilets, students’ store room, an open studio, computer lab, submission room to submit their projects and a NATA room for the new candidates to take up the NATA test (for which the school is a centre) are other facilities. ASADI has its own hostel facility for male students and accommodation is provided by the school for female candidates a little away from the campus. For recreation, the students also have access to table tennis and carrom boards inside the building. For the 30 students on campus (including the 17 students in second year), there are 12 teachers — six full-time and six part-time. The school has introduced the Gurukula system where the students get a mentor each, one of their subject teachers who acts as a counsellor and guide, who the student is free to choose. They also have another professional mentor who is a practising architect and under whom the students can intern during the fourth year.
The Class of Unlearning
The school has also introduced a novel concept of a class of unlearning. “There could be a number of wrong things that a teacher teaches and the student learns. A class of unlearning in the literal sense would be one where they will be helped to deconstruct and unlearn what they have learnt. The rigid structures they have in mind about how to think, design and create will be melted down to make way for their imagination,” says Peter Gast, Dean. Gast is an architect from Germany, settled in Kerala for the past 20 years. I believe the students should be given more time to study and not rush into the job training, which will stunt their imagination,” he says.
The students also take up small public projects that gives them real- time exposure to architecture outside campus. “I chose to study in this college only because of their guarantee to provide freedom to design. I did not want to be bound by textbooks and rule books,” says Dean Samuel, a first-year student.
The school currently has only management seats for which the fee is `1,75,000 per year.
— revathi@newindianexpress.com