ICIMOD Headquarter Entrée

ICIMOD (International Center for Integrated Mountain Development) is a mountain institute of the Hindu Kush Mountains with its headquarter in Kathmandu, Nepal. The project is a collaboration of Arch i Platform (Delhi based) and Sustainable Mountain Architecture (SMA, Nepal based) teams. I headed the Nepal team as the Project Architect.

Entrée
The main entrance porch to ICIMOD headquarter had to be rebuilt after it was damaged by the ‘Gorkha Earthquake’ of 25th April 2015.

The main concept of the design was to use the linearity of the site and turn it into an interesting, welcoming entrance. Also the challenge was to work with “old and new”. The profile of the Entrée draws inspiration from jagged peaks of mountain ranges and have been expressed by exposing metal structures in the form of “Architecture in Ribs”.

With questionnaires and observation from around 200 staff at ICIMOD, we understood that the majority of the office goers were for a pedestrian and wheelchair friendly new entrance to the previous car drop-off porch. Thus the Entrée design incorporates a ramp while emphasizing on the visual connection from the premise entrance to the porch.

Illustration