Four Towers and a Green: Homes for Judges at Chajju Bagh

A judge's home is rarely only a home. Judgments are read and written there, files arrive in the evening, and colleagues call in for a discussion. At Chajju Bagh, on Sinha Library Road in the heart of Patna, we are designing a Campus of 96 homes for judges of the Civil Courts in which this double life is part of the plan from the start.

A green in the middle

The site is a little under three and a half acres, an urban plot with houses and institutions on every side and the Ganga about a kilometre and a half to the north. Its best asset is the line of mature trees along its edges. The plan keeps them and turns inward. Four towers of seven floors stand on stilts, two for senior judges to the west and two for other judicial officers to the east. Between them lies a long landscaped green, and on its axis the club house, shared by both.

The buildings cover only about 30 per cent of the ground. The road runs around the edge, and cars go down into a common basement or under the stilts, so the green in the middle belongs to people walking from their towers to the club, and to children playing within sight of the homes.

Room to work

Every home has a Library or study and an office room alongside its drawing and dining rooms, two bedroom suites, a guest room and two balconies. The larger homes for senior judges, of about 180 square metres, add a meeting room for ten people, so that a discussion need not move to the Court. On the top floor of each tower a Guest House and six transit homes wait for visiting officers and those newly posted to the city.

A club for families

The club house is small and busy: a crèche and indoor games on the ground floor, a large yoga room and a recreation room above, and a gymnasium. Its porch opens onto the green, the one place in the Campus where all its households meet.

Shade first

Patna's summers are long and hot and its monsoon is heavy. The towers are shaded on their east and west faces, balconies are set back in deep frames, roofs are insulated and the Campus reuses its treated water for flushing and for the gardens. The trees on the boundary, kept from the start, do the rest.