Dutch practice Mecanoo Architecten worked together with Delhi’s Archohm, in order to design pavilions for the design campus at the Design Village in Delhi, India. The idea was that The Design Village would be generated along a central spine called the Ducth path, where pavilions will be placed with the aim of creating social catalysts by solving the daily needs of the users this campus.

One of the focus points of the Dutch path pavilions is to analyze and criticize their conventional program and function and reinvent them in a new innovative point of view to the typical functions required in a university campus. This way the designers would influence the future designers and show them that design can be a tool to solve people’s primary needs, and innovation is a continuous process for progress.

Rather than simply addressing the typical function of a convenience store – buying and selling, the pavilion aims at creating social encounters around it. Reinventing the conventional Indian “kinara store” by the opposition to the concept of closed introvert convenience store, exposing its most primary function to the exterior, it becomes the shopping social center of the Dutch path that is a magnet to attract interaction and enable chance of encounters.

The pavilion design and concept is based on modesty, openness, transparency and sustainability by using the natural resources that provides its surroundings, academic architecture principles and local construction system. With the motto that form follows anything, it criticizes the current trending of irresponsible iconic architecture. It solves first issues of shelter, shield, light, ventilation, function, structure, construction, etc. Form will come, it will follow its principles, avoiding pretentious forms and making it typical it will become special. The project pretends to be an example of simplicity and architecture principles, serving as a learning experience for the future students of the Design Village which will be the users of this building.