LANDSCAPE
Ramgarh, a city in Jharkhand, near to it’s capital Ranchi is a mining, industrial and cultural hub. It is also a Historic landmark and during British rule, it housed several Wood treatment plants for sleepers (wooden planks under rail tracks to hold it in place). After the introduction of modern railroad systems that has concrete-based sleepers, they were abandoned with heavy machineries and boilers left intact.
Thus, DFO of Ramgarh came to us with unique idea to reconstruct these plants as awareness centers for environment, history and local culture.
To make this Idea an existence, we merged the interior and exterior spaces with the sense of connected as one entity and landscaped the level differences with open-air theatres, seating and mounds; while the interior spaces were converted to cafeterias where the structure was semi-demolished and museums, where it housed machinery. This helped cutting costs of moving those machinery, for example as well as lesser cut-fills. The pond that stored water for boiler was converted into lily pond.
