Allen Career Institute, Kota Waiting Area Tensile Structure

Allen’s Kota campuses move very large numbers of students on a tight timetable, and much of that movement is outdoors — between teaching blocks, to and from the gates, and in queues for entry and notice boards. Left uncovered, those routes are punishing in the Kota summer and unusable in heavy rain. The brief was a continuous canopy over the main walkway and waiting area that removed both problems.

Ekra Decor delivered it as a turnkey job — survey and setting-out along the route, 3D structural and membrane design, fabrication of the galvanised steel frame and the welded fabric, and installation and tensioning — over about 1,858 m² in roughly 35 days.

A walkway canopy is a long, narrow structure, and the priority is to keep the walking surface clear. Ekra Decor carries the roof on a single line of columns set to one edge of the route, with the membrane and its supporting steel reaching across the width from there, so there is nothing to weave around and the full path stays usable.

The membrane is form-found in 3D and pre-stressed into double curvature along its length, which keeps a light fabric roof taut under wind uplift and gives it a consistent fall to the supported edge — rain is shed away from the walkway, not onto it. The steelwork is designed to IS 800 and the canopy is checked for wind, rain and seismic loading to the applicable Indian codes, with the foundations sized for the uplift that governs a lightweight roof.

A translucent membrane keeps the route bright rather than tunnel-like, and cuts the solar heat so the covered walkway stays noticeably cooler than the open ground beside it.

The steel is cut, welded and hot-dip galvanised in the workshop and the membrane is cut to pattern and high-frequency welded into panels off-site, so on-site work is limited to casting the edge foundations, erecting the column line and roof steel, and running and tensioning the membrane.

On a campus running full sessions, the work was fenced off in sections and lifts and deliveries were timed to fit around class changeovers, with completed lengths of walkway handed back as they were finished. The whole canopy went up in about 35 days.

Students now move along the main walkway shaded from the sun and sheltered from the rain, and the waiting and queuing areas are covered too — a straightforward piece of welfare infrastructure for a very busy campus. The canopy needs only periodic cleaning and a routine check of its fixings and tensions.

Ekra Decor builds walkway and circulation canopies for schools, campuses and institutions across India. See more finished work on the projects page, or read about tensile structures in Kota.