Embedded Files
The project explores how the logic of the street—with its continuity and everyday rhythms—can redefine the spatial and institutional character of a police station. Streets represent openness, multiplicity, and informal negotiation, while police stations are typically monolithic endpoints.
This project began by questioning: how can an institutional architecture operate within the continuum of everyday urban life? By observing how people move and interact in urban spaces, these were translated into the organizational strategies of the building using collage as a method to do so, multiple entry points and public functions at the edge, courtyards etc.
Collage as a method to develop design strategies and understanding site forces
Public programs get located on the edge of the road, with degree of privacy increasing as you move inwards, with smaller alleys leading you to open spaces.
The police station no longer remains a consolidated structure but an approachable institution embedded in everyday
Addition of open spaces and multiple access points
3D Collage
While exploring porosity and natural surveillance, the idea of “ways of seeing” became important. The idea of fenestrations and walls in the design were taken forward from this collage which translated to louvred walls, openings at different levels, thin columns, balconies, and colonnades etc, and also looked at how the spatial qualities of such syntax could be taken forward as spaces.
Design Strategies
Using elements of the street like chowks, court yards, alleys which puncture the builtform
The circulation is articulated along the edge of the street in the forms of verandas and corridors, with massing arranged around it.
Public programs are located on the edges of the street with degree of privacy increasing as you go in wards and on the first floor
Ground floor plan
The station unfolds as a linear network of interconnected spaces, with central spines that function as an internal streets with public programs arranged along these. Borrowing elements from the street such as chowks which become the gathering areas and alleys, verandahs, and courtyards, acting as a threshold that maintain openness while articulating degrees of privacy by creating a gradual transition from public edges to controlled interiors. Programs overlap and spill into one another with limited internal partition walls forming a free open plan which forms a field of relationships rather than a strict hierarchy.
Context plan 1:500
First floor plan
Axonometric Drawing
Sections
Movement through the station is continuous and multi-directional with Multiple entries allowing people to pass through the structure. Visual continuity along verandahs, corridors, and open courts allow natural surveillance. The design fosters collective presence, where both public and institutional life coexist. Here Authority is expressed not through walls or gates, but through visibility and shared presence.
The scale and form of the building reinforces this human-centered approach. It is largely single-storey, with selective areas rising to a second floor for private functions. It’s a low-rise, horizontally spread layout which breaks the conventional intimidating image of police stations.
The police station no longer remains an isolated block, but a street of interactions, where authority is visible and approachable with boundaries between civic and authority are softened, embedding the station into the everyday fabric of Borivali.
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Process models
Model photos
Panel
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