A Chakra of Learning, and Every Tree Kept: Planning Mahatma Gandhi Central University

Motihari is where Gandhi began the Champaran Satyagraha. The new Campus of Mahatma Gandhi Central University, 263.66 acres on the banks of a river off National Highway 27, takes two of his ideas as its starting points: the chakra, the wheel he made a symbol of self-reliance, and a deep respect for the land as it is.

Reading the land first

The Master Plan did not begin with geometry. It began with a survey of what was already there: a river running along the whole edge of the site, an old irrigation canal, the nahar, cutting through it, low-lying hollows that fill with water in the rains, four old baghs, or groves, mature trees across the land, and a small temple. Each of these became an anchor for the plan rather than an obstacle to it.

One Campus from two parcels

The land came in two large parcels separated by the canal. Rather than bridge it as an inconvenience, the plan makes the canal the spine of the Campus. Its banks are lined and landscaped, sit-out decks are placed along the water, and a canal-side road and crossings knit the two halves into one. The academic buildings are consolidated together, so that the University reads as a single place.

The chakra

The academic complex is drawn as a chakra. At its hub is a shared core of administration, Library and gathering spaces; the Schools and departments radiate outward from it like spokes, each reaching into the landscape. The form is a plan as much as a symbol. Every department sits the same distance from the centre, so none is placed ahead of another, and every one looks out over green courts between the spokes. Knowledge is shared from a common centre; that is the idea the building makes visible.

Every tree kept

The plan keeps every existing tree on the site. Buildings, roads and paths are set out around them, so that mature trees shade walks and frame views from the first day the Campus opens, long before new planting can grow. The four baghs are kept as shaded groves for rest and informal gathering, and the temple stays where it is, part of the landscape of the University.

Water and low ground

The site is low-lying, so much of it has to be raised by earth filling before building can begin, and the most important buildings stand on raised platforms, safe from floods. Some of the hollows are kept, re-shaped as ponds and recharge basins that hold rainwater and return it to the ground. Along the river, a retaining wall with ghat-like steps opens the Campus to the water while keeping it secure.

Roads stay at the edges of the Campus, and the heart of it is given to people on foot and on bicycles, along shaded paths between the spokes of the chakra and under the trees that were there before the University.