Soil & Sea, a brick barrel-vaulted community centre in Chennai

Local studio Spaces by Manah has finished The Soil & Sea, a community centre in Chennai built to hold learning space for a nearby education centre alongside workshops and events. The idea was a building that seems to grow out of its tree-lined plot, and a brick barrel vault that lifts above the canopy so it reads as a landmark on the site.

It is a single-storey masonry building on a rubble stone foundation, arranged around a flat-roofed volume. An L-shaped verandah wraps two sides, which the studio calls an "intermediate, informal zone" between rooms and garden. Steps and a ramp lead up to it; one stretch sits under the vault as the main gathering space, the other under a sloping tiled roof, with granite pillars and built-in seating along the way.

The load-bearing brick is left exposed inside and out, and the doors, windows and Mangalore floor tiles were sourced locally and reused, so the glossy tiles play against the raw walls and roof. A separate toilet block follows the same recipe of stone base, brick walls and tiled canopy.

Dezeen doesn't say whether visitors can drop in, so treat this as one for anyone interested in how brick and borrowed materials can shape a generous public room.

Our summary of a story from Dezeen, published 16 October 2026. Read the original

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