The Mandvi Science Laboratory in Kutch, Gujarat, commissioned by the Khimji Ramdas Trust, became for SPASM an instrument of precise social intervention, addressing one of rural India’s most persistent inequities: the absence of quality STEM infrastructure for girls in marginalised communities. The facility is dedicated to eleventh and twelfth-grade students, establishing a state-of-the-art learning environment where none previously existed.
The architectural response is inseparable from its social mandate. Rather than defaulting to imported industrial materials, SPASM deliberately localised the construction process commissioning regional Kumbhars, traditional vernacular potters, to handcraft thousands of custom terracotta cones. The intervention simultaneously revitalised an endangered ancestral craft and returned vital economic capital to the regional artisanal ecosystem.
These conical forms are not decorative. They function as structural, low-tech passive cooling systems zero-electricity breathing walls thermodynamically engineered to perform under Kutch’s extreme arid climate. The result is a building that synthesises traditional Indian craftsmanship with rigorous thermodynamic logic.
The laboratory stands as a disciplined archetype for public infrastructure in constrained economic contexts demonstrating that institutional architecture can simultaneously advance educational equity, preserve cultural heritage, and elevate community welfare without compromise.
