SHELTERING POTENTIAL

Late Ar. Mahendra Parekh and Ar. Pranav Gajjar design a twelve-storey student housing on the Somaiya Ayurvihar Campus that challenges the assumption that transient occupancy justifies minimal design, proving instead that temporary homes deserve permanent thoughtfulness

- Kashish Kaushal

If Bollywood movies are to be trusted, hostels were always seen as cruel establishments where a student was forcefully enlisted, often to discipline or instill a sense of maturity beyond their tender age. By now, I am certain the image of a crying Ishaan Awasthi has surfaced in your mind with that melancholic song by Shankar Mahadevan playing in the background. Let me steer you back to real life and almost two decades later, today, where hostels have acquired a much-needed overhaul and are no longer fearful enterprises meant to break spirits. Located in Mumbai, Ashtavakra Student Housing offers a rare and radical example. Commissioned by the Somaiya Trust and designed by Late Ar. Mahendra Parekh and Ar. Pranav Gajjar, this twelve-storey building reimagines the hostel not as infrastructure but as what the architects call “the architecture of becoming”. “At first glance, a hostel might appear to be a temporary structure—a place to rest, to store belongings, to study and rest but in reality, it is far more. It becomes the first space a young person occupies as an adult, often away from home for the first time,” elaborates Pranav. For him, the origin of this project began with a thought that questioned what a student housing does to its occupant—and why is it important to have well-intended spaces for young adults.