Amaron Men’s Hostel by Studio Chintala

With the explicit goal of providing psychological and thermal comfort, the design of the Amaron Working Men’s Hostel adopts several design strategies. A design that is driven by an honest effort to address these two parameters, a design that assumes a logical process of listing the attributes and developing strategies for each of them.

The Pre-Design phase included an intense “visioning” exercise, with several workshops with factory workers from existing facilities, hostel wardens, facility managers and company leadership. This was followed by a critical analysis of the existing hostel building in an effort to understand what worked and what didn’t. With the resounding message that psychological and thermal comfort were the major considerations for the workers, a design brief was articulated.

The Hostel is built on a 25-acre housing parcel in the 500 Acre Amara Raja Growth Corridor Campus (ARGC) near the town of Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh. A predominantly industrial campus, along the Bangalore Tirupati Highway, it houses battery manufacturing plants, administrative offices, housing facilities and other amenities.

The workers are relatively young, between the ages of 18 to 25, several are high-school dropouts and for most of them living in the hostel is the first time living away from their homes. Therefore addressing the workers’ psychological wellbeing and comfort became an important design consideration. Also, with summer temperatures soaring into the late 40s and early 50s and dorm rooms without air-conditioning meant mitigating heat-gain was another major design driver.

The design process included listing out all possible passive sustainability strategies including building orientation, shading, cross-ventilation. A variety of tools including shading analysis, heat-gain studies, prevailing winds using advanced computational tools including Grasshopper and Ecotect were used. Two linear masses each with a double-loaded corridor are arranged along the East-West axis. Built on rocky and sloped terrain, the two masses are staggered to provide views of the picturesque landscape and also avoid windows overlooking each other. A bridge connects the two blocks and becomes the main axis of social interaction. It interfaces with a series of open spaces some that are double-height thereby visually connecting floors. The portion of the blocks that overlap are strategically designed to be bathrooms with clothes washing and drying facilities. The ground floor houses several amenities including a library, recreation room, a convenience store, hair salon and a TV Room. 

The dormitory rooms are designed to be functional, each of them house 9 beds set into a semi-private alcove, each with a study table, closet and each with direct access to a tall window providing ample daylight and ventilation. The steel beds and storage are designed to be durable and comfortable. The building is made from very basic building materials, including a reinforced concrete structure, block wall masonry plastered and painted. Large tall shading devices made from a structure of welded galvanised cable trays wrapped with fibre cement board. The flooring is a durable grey stone sourced from the quarries of Telangana.

Post-occupancy evaluation of the facility revealed a much lower ambient temperature throughout the year, more interaction among residents and an overall vibrant space. The project truly represents the philosophy that design is problem solving, the process of finding the simplest and the most logical solutions. Beauty is the by-product of the inherent simplicity and honesty of the design.