Nagpur Civic Centre: Critical Regionalism Built Around a Kund Turned Public Plaza

Most Indian civic buildings now arrive in the same glass skin, indifferent to whether they stand in Pune, Patna or Nagpur. This proposal pushes back with one strong move: it takes the kund, the stepped water tank that once served as both sacred ground and climatic regulator, and rebuilds it as the public heart of a contemporary civic centre. The towers and podium matter, but the hollow at the centre is the real argument.

Regionalism: Nagpur Civic Centre is a project by Sayali Pitale, framed explicitly through the lens of Critical Regionalism. The site sits near National Highway 53 in Nagpur, the "city of lakes" in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region, at a seam between the old city and its newly expanding districts. Pitale treats that position as a mandate: the civic centre should stitch the two together rather than stand apart as an institutional block, and it should do so in a language that belongs to this place without imitating it.

Learning From Courtyards, Verandahs and Layered Thresholds

The project opens with homework, and it shows. The comparative board sets the work of three architects side by side, pairing photographs with plans, sections and diagrams that isolate courtyards, verandahs and sequences of layered space. These are the recurring devices of climate-aware Indian modernism: the shaded edge, the open centre, the gradual passage from street to interior.

What makes the study useful is that it extracts spatial principles rather than styles. Pitale is not collecting motifs to apply; she is reading how threshold and enclosure manage heat, light and social life. That distinction is the core of Critical Regionalism, which the project positions as a reinterpretation of local culture and climate within a contemporary framework, not a nostalgic return to vernacular form.

A Kund Opened to the City

The presentation sheet reveals the plan's organising logic: circular and radial geometries drawn from traditional Indian planning, reorganised into a civic typology. In the aerial view, a curving plaza wraps a pool, with two towers rising behind. The kund, historically a place of gathering and ritual that also cooled its surroundings and stored water, becomes the shared floor of the whole complex, a public room open to the sky.

The eye-level render makes the ambition tangible. A curved blue pool is fronted by a terraced pavilion screened with white fins, its paved edge drawing people to the water. The terracing echoes the stepped profile of a traditional tank, and the fins temper direct sun across the facade. Here climate response and symbolism are the same gesture, which is where the concept earns its keep. The water is meant to moderate the microclimate of the plaza while giving the civic centre an identity rooted in Nagpur's long relationship with lakes.

Two Towers Grounded by a Working Podium

The final board shifts from idea to building. A tower section, a typical floor plan and a podium level plan describe a lobed two-tower complex, with site services diagrams showing how the scheme would actually run. The lobed floor plates carry the curving geometry of the plaza upward, so the towers read as an extension of the ground plan rather than generic office slabs dropped onto it.

The podium is where the programme comes together. Pitale layers cultural, social and commercial uses and refuses to segregate them, grouping built forms into clear hierarchies while keeping visual connections across the site. Circulation is conceived as an experiential journey, so moving between a cultural space and a shop becomes part of the civic experience. This is a civic centre imagined as a participatory platform, not a monumental enclosure.

Why This Project Matters

Indian cities face a real choice between standardised development and buildings that carry the memory of where they stand. Pitale's proposal shows that the second path need not mean pastiche. By abstracting the kund into a plaza, the radial plan into a civic layout and the stepped tank into a terraced pavilion, the project turns inherited forms into working spatial strategies that shade, cool and gather people.

Its strongest lesson is about where a civic building puts its emphasis. Instead of leading with the towers, the scheme leads with the void between them, a public room shaped by water and climate. For a site that bridges the old city and the new, that choice gives the institution a centre that belongs to everyone, and it offers a credible model for how regional identity and modern construction can share the same ground.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Sayali Pitale

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Project credits: Regionalism - Nagpur Civic Centre by Sayali Pitale.