Mamji Medical College, Karachi

Mamji Medical College occupies a plot of 1,200 square yards near Waterpump in Karachi and holds 167,265 sq ft of accommodation. The only way to fit a medical college onto that footprint is to build it as a tower: ground plus sixteen storeys, with a basement, a mezzanine and a service floor of its own.

The teaching departments — anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, forensic medicine, pharmacology, community medicine and pathology — are stacked with the administrative offices, an auditorium and academic support space. Parking is taken into a podium at the base rather than surrendered to the site, and the podium reads as a distinct element below the glazed shaft above it.

A building of this height serving several hundred students at once is governed by its lifts and stairs, so vertical circulation is the organising decision rather than a consequence of the plan. The practice carried architecture, structural and MEP engineering and holds project management and detailed supervision.