MAY/JUNE DISCOVERIES

Reuse, repurpose, restore: Here is our dispatch from the world of design and architecture with a spotlight on sustainability. Danish brand Mater taps Patricia Urquiola to craft a line of sleek furniture from waste material. Bottega Veneta's Matthieu Blazy finds inspiration in a classic Le Corbusier design. Mumbai's 165-yearold Afghan Church gets restored to its original glory. Enjoy this summer issue.

- SUNIL SETHI,SAM COCHRAN, KRITI SARASWAT-SATPATHY

VIR.MUELLER ARCHITECTS' DESIGN FOR THE HEALTHY PLANET SCHOOL IN NOIDA IS A LIGHT-FILLED, GRACEFUL HAVEN FOR LEARNING AND PLAYING.

A school by any other name is still a school built around an institutional grid of long corridors, classrooms at right angles, sharp staircases, with libraries and common rooms slathered in artificial lighting. Yet New Delhi-based architect Pankaj Vir Gupta, of the award-winning firm of Vir.Mueller Architects, finds a way to bend the norm. His path-breaking design for the Healthy Planet school-30,000 square feet spread over three storeys on a half-acre plot-is a place of sinuous red brick curves, graceful concrete overhangs and flowing indoor spaces. Softly illuminated by oculus-like portholes and skylights in a tented roof, it's an invitation to learn and play in an unconventional way.

The words "Learning Centre" and a graphic of playing blocks on the façade may give outsiders a hint: Healthy Planet is a pre-school for children in the age group of nine months to six years among the densely packed tower blocks and cookie-cutter townhouses of Noida near Delhi.

Its founders, Arunabh and Sonal Singh, professional educators already involved in a family-run high school enterprise, harboured a "dream project" of a preschool that would, in part, act as a community hub. "Apart from standards of safety and hygiene, there was a need for co-working space for mothers in an area with a high demographic of working parents," says Sonal. Hence, one of Healthy Planet's two standout features, conceived by Vir Gupta, is a calm oasis for working moms next to a cafe that beats any coffee shop. The other is a vast children's library-"the most important and largest room", says Gupta-that welcomes any child, not just Healthy Planet students, from the neighbourhood.