Institute expects the project to cost Rs 15 cr per annum for next 3-5 years
For the next 3-5 years, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) estimates a project cost of Rs 15 crore per annum for the conservation and restoration of the iconic Louis Kahn Plaza (LKP) buildings at its main campus here.
In an attempt to conserve and restore the plaza, IIM-A has appointed Peter Inskip + Peter Jenkins Architects as the conservation consultants for restoration study and M/s Somaya & Kalappa Consultants as Conservation Architects for the Louis Kahn buildings of the Institute.
“Roughly we would have to account for a Rs 15 crore cost per annum for at least next 3-5 years. We are open to any organisation that wants to spend its CSR corpus on this project. However, the real costs will only be ascertained by the architects in near future after due assessments,” said Ashish Nanda, director of IIM-A.1
Over the time the building were repaired, however major damage occured during the 2001 Gujarat Earth Quake. The building made out of red brick has developed cracks at many places that it has left the managers of the top B-school worried. Last year, IIMA floated a tender for a master architect to restore the main campus's iconic building.
"We have hounded on four globally top consultants and then we found UK-based firm for the conservation work" said Ashish Nanda, director, IIMA. Later, the institute also came up with request for proposal (RFP) for architect restoration consultant, and by the end of the process it came up with Mumbai-based Ms Somaya & Kalappa Consultants.
Peter Inskip and Stephen Gee from UK-based firm visited IIMA in January to study the IIMA's Louis Kahn building. While on Tuesday, Brinda Somaya, the principal architect of Ms Somaya & Kalappa Consultants visited IIMA building.
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Responding to a query on the challenges the Louis Kahn Plaza faces, Mr Brinda Somaya, said "The main challenge is the bricks". She further said that quality of the brick and mortar is said to be a matter of concern, but have to look into depth and further can be said only after having detail assessment. She also informed that her firm has tied up with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Chennai for technology guidance2