Kaliyuva Mane - New Campus

A masterplan and architectural proposal for the new campus of Kaliyuva Mane, a residential vocational school serving children from semi-urban and rural Karnataka who have stepped away from the conventional education system. Many are first-generation learners, many come from agricultural families. For them, this campus is a second chance - and often their best one.

The brief asked us to design not a school with a vocational add-on, but a campus where every zone is a working environment. Students maintain the solar array that powers the school, grow and sell food under the KM label, run a real token economy, and govern through a functioning panchayat hall. By the time they leave, they carry nine to ten months of real, supervised work experience - a track record rather than a certificate.

2026 proposal

Chikkanandi, Mysore

Our proposal covers a 6-acre site across nine zones: academic, community and civic, kitchen and dining, dormitories, staff accommodation, vocational workshops, services, agri-processing, and open landscape. Phase 1 accommodates 150 students across seven livelihood tracks - solar and electrical, agri-processing, construction and earth building, tailoring, digital skills, healthcare, and horticulture - with a masterplan already accounting for Phase 2 expansion to 500 students. The total Phase 1 build is estimated at approximately ₹8.6 crore, with CSEB blocks manufactured from site soil as a deliberate cost and material strategy.

This project remains at the proposal stage. We are sharing it here because the research, site analysis, and design work represent some of our most careful thinking to date - and because the problem it is trying to solve deserves to be built.