Hampi Art Labs, by Sameep Padora and Associates

Hampi Art Labs is an arts centre and residency in Toranagallu, Ballari district, Karnataka, commissioned by the JSW Foundation and designed by Mumbai studio Sameep Padora and Associates (sP+a). Founders Sangita Jindal and Tarini Jindal Handa opened the campus to the public on 6 February 2024, about thirty to thirty-five kilometres from the UNESCO World Heritage ruins of Hampi, once capital of the Vijayanagara empire.

The site was barren. Padora has said the team looked past the empty plot to Hampi’s boulder landscape and to the Tungabhadra, imagining people moving through the campus as a river. The buildings are a low, sinuous concrete shell: a central ‘space of flows’ flanked by landscaped mounds. The official studio description places a gallery, café, and pavilion at the entry court; workshops and individual studios beyond; amphitheatres and a sculpture plaza at the edge; residencies further on. JSW and the centre’s own site describe a nine-acre campus of exhibition spaces, studios, apartments, gardens, and a café. sP+a’s project facts list five acres and 35,136 square metres; ArchDaily repeats that area and dates completion 2023; Archello converts 35,136 square metres to 8.68 acres.

The facade’s burnt-orange colour is iron oxide from the adjacent JSW Vijayanagar steel plant. Earth excavated on site was used as formwork for the fluid concrete, then returned as landscape berms. Slag waste was compressed and baked into paving for paths and roofs. Roofs are planted with local wild grass, used both as thermal mass and as another ground for visitors and installations. Inside, white plaster follows the same curves; courtyards and full-height glass bring daylight into galleries that would otherwise have been linear black boxes. Workshops include ceramics, printmaking, and 3D printing; residents can also use nearby JSW facilities. The first exhibition, Right Foot First (6 February–31 May 2024), showed works from Sangita Jindal’s collection. A three-month residency runs four times a year.

Photographs show a continuous, shadow-catching wall rather than a grid of openings: the elevation turns in and out, so courtyards appear only as one walks. The iron-oxide render reads as both industrial byproduct and Deccan earth, aligning the building with the surrounding iron-rich ground. Green roofs and berms make the silhouette closer to landform than to a pavilion object. These observations are from published photography, not from on-site survey.