CoDe Studio

Government Kannada Higher Primary School

Murphy Town, Bangalore

Project Team: Kavita Sastry, Rushil Hegde, Chetan Kumar

Client: Ashwini Charitable Trust (NGO)

Bangalore is blessed with built heritage set up as a large army Cantonment by the British. The Government Kannada Higher Primary School located at Ulsoor Bangalore was built by the British as a elementary school in the year 1913 to educate children of the ancillary staff. It is situated in an extremely busy neighbourhood, on a chaotic street with a narrow access it’s easy to miss the school. But once you chance upon it you fall in love.

The heritage building is one of the 3 structures on a 30,000 sft site. Of the other 2, one was built recently to the house classrooms since the dilapidated roof of the original structure raised a safety concern. The original structure became a dumping ground for junk and was headed for demolition.

The structure had a symmetrical plan with a central hall & two wings. It was a combination of brick and stone masonry with a double height Mangalore tile roof supported on a solid timber truss. The gabled roof with Gothic windows and wooden facia further accentuated the colonial style of architecture

Restoration Requirements

The restoration of the heritage buidling was executed by addressing its existing state and retarding deterioration. The tiled roof was giving way in most sections with the walls damaged from the seepage of water through the roof. Most of the wooden rafters had rotted, the floors damaged, with the building left unused for over a decade.

Rainwater leakage on the walls
Broken Roof
Deteriorated window grills
Exposed brick masonry and Damaged chajja
Broken window glass panels
Brick Erosion due to water leakage

Restoration Process

The idea of this project was to restore the building to its original glory. A meticulous and time consuming task, this was achieved carefully by documenting and preparing a comprehensive proposal for its complete restoration. The structure had a symmetrical plan with a central hall and two wings. It was a combination of brick and stone masonry with a double height Mangalore tile roof supported on a solid timber truss.

The gabled roof with Gothic windows and wooden facia further accentuated the colonial style of architecture. The timber roof truss had become weak over a period of time and started sagging, because of which the terracotta tiles had fallen off. All the timber was replaced and the roof truss was painted with colors true of that period. The broken Mangalore roof tiles were removed.

About 70% of the existing tiles were reused after cleaning. About 60 % of the wooden rafters were damaged due to water seepage and were replaced with new ones made out of local wood sourced from Mangalore.