A futuristic academic building and a world-class student activity centre

Established in 2009 as a private non-profit research centre, Ahmedabad University focuses on raising compassionate leaders who can make an impact with their innovative ideas. Having ambitious expansion plans, the university wanted to set up a world-class activity centre for nearly 10,000 students, in addition to their academic building for which we had partnered in 2017.

The academic building was a high-tech space for the university’s arts and science faculty, covering an area of 2,17,000 square feet. The neoteric building with modern workstations encompasses fully equipped meeting rooms, 100-seater classrooms, library, amphitheatre, faculty lounge and breakout areas. JLL Project & Development Services team handled this project from start to finish within the stipulated time.

Challenge

However, the scope of this new request for a student activity centre was vast and the nature complex. The client had envisioned this centre as a dedicated space for all formal and informal activities on the campus beyond lecture halls. Happy with their experience of working with JLL for the academic building, they decided to extend our partnership and assigned us the entire project scope, from construction to handover of this activity centre.

This 2,25,000-square-foot activity centre intends to provide an interactive space for the students to spend quality time eating, studying, playing, reading, or just hanging out with friends. The building has a large multipurpose hall cum auditorium with a grand stage where various indoor sports and cultural events can be held. The space has a seating capacity for 400 people, extending to accommodate up to 1,000 for big events. The centre also has a library, lounge, and a roof dedicated to outdoor sports activities.

Outcome

As we end-to-end managed the construction of this magnificent activity space, identifying vendors, scheduling their tasks, managing civil, mechanical, electrical and plumbing works was our responsibility.

We used the roof area of the activity centre building to generate alternative energy with 450 solar panels that generate 140 kW of solar power that is used for fans, lights and power sockets. To give the centre building a consistent and uniform finish, we used the precast hollow core slabs, which helped the client save much time and ensured the quality of the construction.

These insights and forward-thinking approaches resulted in a timely handover of this next-gen activity centre with health, wellness and tech as its core elements.