The sensitive reconstruction of the open-air Natarani Amphitheatre at Ahmedabad by Indigo Architects is layered. It presents a new logic and validity of engagement and perspective for the site – as a palimpsest of the connecting landscape, overlays of history, and material conscience.
The first performing arts venue in Gujarat, Natarani Amphitheatre at Darpana Academy is a platform of substantial relevance – in function and form – in Ahmedabad. Over the course of its existence, it has presented theatres, dances, music-, film- related events and consequently, witnessed the cultural transition of the city.
Context Plan – sites of significance and cultural institutions in proximity to Natarani.The perceivable context of this site is extensive, even cloistered. In the movements that seemingly changed its form over decades, the premise is now of accumulation rather than of distinction. By itself, the site thus bears the influence of several starts and one cannot discern the organised rhythm of the different authorships strongly. Fittingly for a context with successive additions that were designed over time, such as a library by Balkrishna Doshi in 1963, a mandir in 1966, Darpanaa Academy in 1968 by Achyut Kanvinde, the older Amphitheatre by Keerti Shah in 1994, the café in 1999, a serrated brick acoustic wall by Abhikram and in its line, the Mrinalini Sarabhai Gallery by HCP in 2017, the renewed Natatani Theatre by Indigo Architects is a generative work of associations.
Many decades later, the design reflects on all these encounters of the site in an open dialogue, with the extant environment and with the river. One of the project’s most enduring skills is its ability to restore the loss of its connections and operative status after the Sabarmati Riverfront Development project claimed a large part of the stage area. Most of the other history was intangibly distant except for the few that were in direct proximity of the theatre such as the library, Darpanaa Academy, the interrupted access to the Riverfront by the acoustic wall and Mrinalini Sarabhai Gallery. “It is in the context of this reality, “write the architects, “that its renovation was both imperative and desired for its activities to flourish. The new proposed layout not only attempts to mitigate this situation, but also reimagines Natarani theatre to improve upon its existing infrastructure and capacity.”
Natarani Site PlanWith the promise of an extension/expansion of the existing frontier, the renovation seems to offer an aperture to a new space, a new insight. It is almost a relearning of the process, to create a landscape of balance and use the resonances to provide relevance and meaning to the experience of the present-day amphitheatre.
Essentially, the visible and comprehensible part of the project comprises of a literalised arrangement for the amphitheatre and its ancillary functions for accessible green rooms, utility spaces and improved sound and lighting capabilities. Yet, the project is not only about this parti. Indicatively, the brief from the client also invited the architects to consider strategies towards being sustainable. Under the rubric, the project relies on and celebrates Indigo’s own epistemic exploratory practice that values sustainable techniques rather than merely formal relationships. Consciously, the question is re-oriented from that of a cosmetic renovation to a more pointed one.
The architecture is invested in assuming the vitality of what has always been there. These two corollaries – sustainability and revival – bind the project together. It reacts and connects. For instance, the first in multiple interventions is to capitalise on the gap between the two structures of the gallery and the acoustic wall to create a segue to the riverfront edge.
Through subtle representational cues, it re-builds on the metaphors and histories that constitute the memory of Natarani – by the way of experiencing, understanding and perpetuating the material and cultural importance of each aspect. Occupying the north-east corner of the site, the open-air theatre is tonally deferent to the axis of the dance school and material core of the other formal buildings, establishing a trace of spatial congruence right from the street access. In this logic, the afterlife of one architecture has bearing on the ease with which the other is written; where old debris such as lime mortars, dolomite plasters, lime surkhi bricks from demolished older structures, including the dilapidated library which was removed with B V Doshi’s consent, are recycled. The old makes way for the new.
The collection of functions is interestingly woven together, in a sequence of paths that lead from a parking to the south and mediating between existing administration offices and Darpanaa Dance School to the north, and the surrounding landscape. The ambulatory path steps in to a congregating plaza, panning out either way as a marginal preface to the amphitheatre. At a vernacular scale, the gestures are simple yet powerful. The enclosure terminates at an entrance and porous wall enveloping the forum.
As a volume, the amphitheatre is robustly legible – conceptualised like a ‘well’. By extending out the existing layout to increase capacity to accomodate 385 people and adding depth, it takes on the form of an accreted geometry. Moreover, the tiered form thus ‘cupping the space’ between the sky, seating and acoustical backdrop, influences the acoustical balance.
A semi-autonomous sculptural element – a curved metal cable-stayed catwalk – emerges as a spinal insert from the wall. In order to host new age performances and state of art lighting and sound, the semi-circular profile, akin to a suspended scaffold or coronet levitates over the setting. It was designed as a system of vertical supports, tension ties and compression struts to reduce vibrations, essentially a shake-free lighting system and to be free of visual barriers.
Increasingly hereon, the natural terrain provides a useful lens through which to consider how the circulation proceeds. The seating gathers over the existing slope with a 4m contour drop towards the stage, and re-invents its relationship with the ground. The core ideas on materiality and light translate into a recognisable architectural language in the seating tiers. It is not overt but a perfect distillation of what a modern-day performance space should encapsulate. When conceiving the repetitive rows of seating, the familiar earthen hues of the older Natarani find new meaning in the intentional use of traditional china mosaic of terracotta-coloured ceramic tiles grouped above of lime-plastered charcoal grey walls.
Details of the truss and seating tiersSuccessively, a lighter palette with grey exposed concrete copings and transition conditions with grey pebblecrete in thresholds and stepped edges frames this space. Further, “all metalwork is charcoal black which essentially gets negated at night, during performances. The physicality and scale of the theatre reverses dramatically at night with enhanced lighting and a sharp central spatial focus. The stage is built with a hard wood assembly flooring, while the entrance plaza is defined by rough grey kota stone slabs that unites the semiopen and open areas of adjacent buildings, which use similar materials,” mention the architects. Relying on mosaic, lime plaster, metal, mute colours, the structure intensifies the experience of the atmosphere above ground. For them, ‘this tension between contradicting elements defines its own idiom as a performance space.’
The cross section of the tiered theatre culminates at the stage with its huge water harvesting tank below and the towering scale of the acoustical wall as its backdrop
At the lower level, contemporary green rooms are designed within the volumesThe pivotal functions of climate control play out in diverse architectural forms: ‘Lime is used in construction along with dolomite plaster to provide the necessary thermal advantage and longevity’. In the subterranean level, the design consolidates its energies and intents to prioritise this important aspect of passive thermal comfort for the hot, dry weather of Ahmedabad. It releases space and activates volumes to accommodate the green rooms and other facilities. Arrayed behind the seating plan are the storage/HVAC rooms, the green rooms, toilets and the service passage.
Towards the wooden stage, the section contains a rainwater harvesting tank with a capacity of 1.0 lac liters. A process is contrived to receive and circulate the flow of air beneath the seating using an arterial system of pipes beneath the seating tiers. A ‘cool thermal storage mass’ is formed underground which is sent to a higher level to be cooled by a natural process. Assisted by gravity, the cooled water returns to the tank below, having absorbed the solar heat in the process. “Additional comfort is provided by the “Displacement Ventilation” system that provides a gentle flow of cool filtered air from several small outlets distributed along the seating tiers. They form a blanket of cool air in the seating zone by displacing the warm stale air,” write the architects. A localised micro-climate environment is optimised, effectively elevating the quality of the experience for the audiences. Aligning to the principle of ‘thermal draining of the structure’, the system works adeptly both in complexity and harmony.
The space has formally opened since 2018. In the performances held, the architecture serves concisely as a canvas to foreground the pageantries hosted there, dissolving into mute layers and coming alive in striations of light and shadow. It is an unassuming intervention where the plan is not to detract from the site where memory and topography are the protagonists. Indigo Architects work with the inherent vulnerabilities of the site, to unify interstitial spaces, thereby suggesting new flows of movement, sustaining an invaluable connection with the city, and evidences new understandings of vitality and sustainability.
Without slipping into didacticism, it conveys the story of a site in a moment in time. What the renovation represents is that a site is not static – that architecture may grow and change with times. As the city continues to densify, so will the site and so will the architecture. While the intervention is typologically readable as a theatre, it also contributes in its own way a different type of lateral thinking for the campus of Darpanaa, reinforcing an ideological centre. Beyond inhabiting the present between the pastness and progress, the design is about how an architectural ambition can significantly contribute to a cultural moment⊗
INDIGO ARCHITECTS is a collaborative studio practice, headed by Mausami and Uday Andhare, supported by a team of young professionals. They follow an integrated design approach incorporating architectural design, landscape planning and interior design into its fold. The design process seeks to resolve the various paradoxes between client needs and affordability, site conditions and programmatic dictates through intensive analyses, explorations, study models and sketches.
