National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS)

We didn’t know it then, but this project transformed us, reshaping the way we designed and at the same time, deepening how we thought, learned, and navigated ambiguity. When we were invited to participate in the competition for a new research facility in Bengaluru, we were aware of the leap we were about to make. The science was advanced, the scale without parallel, and the typology, an open laboratory, almost without precedence in India. It demanded more than design. It called for investigation. The building had to think as much as it had to stand.

This was the second phase of a growing campus. The first had already established the institution’s stature, and this next step was about charting its future. The brief, though technically rigorous, revolved around a deceptively simple idea—innovation emerges as much from spontaneous exchange as from structured analysis. The words stayed with us: ‘Research happens in labs, science happens in corridors’. It became a lens that shaped our understanding of the spaces to be created, as well as the culture they were meant to cultivate.