Following an extensive shortlisting process through a two-stage design competition in which five architectural firms qualified for the final stage, the board of Science Gallery Bengaluru has selected CnT Architects to develop the master plan and detailed design for the project.
The design is organized around a sequence of experiences that build on the core ethos of Science Gallery, “Connect – Participate – Surprise”:
- The Avenue of Connection: A sequence of experiences that form the entrance to SGB, designed to catalyse connections between visitors to the gallery. The sequence contains a forecourt with street level displays to connect SGB to the city, entrance plaza, cafeteria, café garden, and the auditorium above.
- The Hall of Participation: A triple-height day-lit gallery that forms a central core around which all the other display spaces revolve. This hall, which is the first major space into which one enters, will contain interactive displays that introduce the unique approach of SGB where the audience participates in the exhibition, eschewing the conventional museum approach of a passive audience that is always separated from the exhibit.
- The Circle of Surprise: A rising encircling loop by which one traverses the Science Gallery, with exhibits and activities that surprise you at each step.
The design seeks to maximize the preservation of mature trees that already exist on this site, and uses the location of the trees to generate an order of landscaped plazas and gardens. The architecture sits as simple, elegant and energy efficient forms within this landscape in the form of two major, but connected buildings: the main gallery as an overhanging roof covering a cube that opens to the front plaza, and the cafeteria/auditorium block where the cafeteria at ground level is transparent to both the entrance plaza as well as the rear garden. The simple forms with strong connections to landscape form a contemporary interpretation of “the pavilion in a garden”: a theme that has been repeated in many historical traditions of architecture, both within India and internationally. |