Meena
Mani graduated with a Bachelors in Architecture
from the School of Planning and Architecture,
New Delhi. She has worked with various architects
including Stein Doshi and Bhalla, where she was
a Senior Architect at one time.
She
has also been a visiting faculty in various schools
of architecture and interior design including
her alma mater.
Currently, she is a design partner in Stein Mani
Chowfla, Architects Consultants in New Delhi,
where she has led the design team in numerous
educational campus projects,office
buildings, cultural institutional projects
and housing
among others.
Her work has been published in various journals
and magazines, including Architecture + Design
and Design Digest.
The
India Habitat Centre is a moderately dense
complex of institutional and office spaces
organized around linked
courtyards protected from the
intense tropical sunshine and the confusion
of an urban location at the intersection
of two heavily trafficked roads. The pooling
of a number of plots into an
integrated urban formhas
enabled common problems like food services,
parking, meeting facilities etc. to be tackled
in an efficient and comprehensive manner
and resulted in the creation of substantial
civic spaces and facilities.
The
main features of the Centre are:
1. Motor
free landscaped public areas created
by taking the automobiles below the ground.
2. Protected and inter-communicating climate
controlled atrium-like courtyards.
3. Multiple levels of gardens
at the shaded court level, roof top and vertical
garden comprised of carefully ordered window boxes.
The design has achieved the objective of creating
an urban environment
(at the office and institutional building level)
that restores to urban life, the orderliness
and beauty, which has traditionally
been one of the nourishing elements of human culture
and demonstrating that humanist
values can be incorporated into a dense
urban development.
