Morphogenesis, founded by Manit and Sonali Rastogi, has added yet another institutional project to their impressive portfolio containing a diverse range of projects and typologies. Their brick-built design for The Lalit Suri Hospitality Institute in Faridabad, Haryana, aims to provide a world-class learning experience to aspiring students who will continue their careers at the LaLit Hotels scattered across India.

About the project, architecture firm Morphogenesis points out “Education in India typically takes a socialist approach, which means it needs to be made available to all. Thus, available resources need to be stringently managed to make this approach monetarily viable. With the Lalit Suri Hospitality Institute, the design challenge is the imparting of education in the service of luxury hospitality, whilst being set within a modest institutional framework”.

The 2,50,000 sqft building is currently under construction, considerately finds itself a place within five acres of intact forested land. Strategic planning around the dense neem tree grove ensued a generous built form that entwines around and integrates the tree clusters, preserving the landscape and adopting natural shade into its semi-open spaces.

Each section of the campus has been designed to bear dual functions - inspired by the institute’s vision of hospitality skills development - one as an educational learning field and the other as a context conducive to the experience of luxury hospitality. The project addresses versatility in space-function as a way to optimise resources while practically exposing students to operational and managerial aspects of their profession.

This functional flexibility spreads across the entire campus, with cafeterias that double as F&B outlets where students can eat and learn service, and kitchens that allow students to cook and hone their service skills. Even the hostel is built as a pseudo hotel where public gathering spaces have been designed to be serviced like congregational spaces in hotels.

A modular approach to the design further enhances the flexibility and multiplicity of spaces and operations with each room designed as a multiple of a single optimised bay module. Open areas are composed to work as spill-over spaces to promote interaction among the inhabitants.

Sustainable design forms the basis of every one of Morphogenesis’ projects and this fundamental design solution was reflected in the light-wells, courtyard planning, latticework and thermal buffering in the institution. A micro-climate was created using initial planning principles to reduce mechanical energy dependencies and optimise resource consumption, resulting in a design that is Net Zero on energy and water with an EPI of 58kWh/sq.m./yr.

Brick was a suitable material choice for this design, a nod to conventional institutional buildings in India. The material was also a natural economical choice, being locally sourced and produced. It has also been incorporated reinventions of the traditional jaali (lattice work) and jharoka as different forms and levels of fenestrations in the building.

Morphogenesis prides in their work as being 'rooted in sustainability, optimisation, uniqueness and liveability', four inherent parameters that establish the enquiry process that shapes their architecture. The Lalit Suri Hospitality Institute expresses these key ideas as dual-functioning spaces, passive sustainable design strategies, and a muted material palette that provides a campus that is progressive in style and content.

(Text by Ankitha Gattupalli, intern at stirworld.com)