Healing Through Design

Bengaluru, India
The Agami Project / A Threshold
Holcim Foundation Awards 2025
Regional Winner

A Kintsugi-Inspired Health Center in Bengaluru

Located amidst Bengaluru's dense urban fabric, this health center offers an innovative response to rapid urbanization, blending holistic sustainability with thoughtful community engagement. Initially envisioned as a medical facility for the homeless, the project evolved through an intensive participatory design process, adding vibrant public spaces prioritizing well-being, equity, and inclusion for local community members. The vertically stacked facility integrates critical infrastructure with hospitality and recreation, optimizing limited urban space and encouraging community reclamation of previously inaccessible public areas.

a25_healing_through_design_whole_building

In the spirit of Kintsugi—the Japanese art of pottery repair highlighting beauty in imperfection—locally sourced, recycled materials transform the building’s façade into an expressive living ecosystem. Stone remnants from construction waste become planters, simultaneously providing passive cooling, air purification, and acoustic insulation. Repurposed pinewood is reimagined into doors, furniture, and partitions, demonstrating economic feasibility through circular resource use. Native plants reinforce biodiversity, enhancing microclimates and reconnecting building guests to nature.

At the ground level, a flexible amphitheater promotes cultural exchange and recreational activities, explicitly addressing local community demands for safe spaces, especially for women and youth. Economic resilience is reinforced through income-generating initiatives, including a women-led restaurant and accessible health services run collaboratively with community members. This project demonstrates that elegant, socially impactful architecture can be achieved sustainably and economically, exemplifying how urban mining and community-driven design can transform dense, resource-strapped cities into thriving, inclusive urban environments.

Jury Appraisal

The jury praised Healing Through Design as an outstanding example of architectural resourcefulness and social impact. In contrast to more ‘big-budget’ entries, this humble project stood out by doing more with less. Jurors admired how the architects were highly creative with a shoestring budget and scavenged materials to cleverly use them to form an elegant, uplifting space. They noted that, despite being built from recycled parts, the health center doesn’t feel like a rough patchwork – on the contrary, it is a light and beautiful structure, a testament to the design skill of the authors. Jurors also highlighted the clever double-duty design of its elements – for instance, planter boxes along the façade that provide greenery and shade while also serving as structural railings.

Project Team

Main Author: Chloe Zimmermann (right) & Avinash Ankalge (left), The Agami Project / A Threshold

Client: Project Smile Trust

Themes

Circularity & Resource Efficiency | Social Equity & Inclusion | Well-Being & Comfort

Status

Completed

Sustainability Goals

Healthy Planet

Sustainable building design through passive measures
Initially a medical Center for the homeless, the project evolved into an inclusive Health Center, embracing a holistic vision of well-being that integrates mental and physical health through safe spaces, biophilia, social integration, sports, nutrition, and accessible care for all. The green facade of recycled stone planters cools the building through shading and ventilation, reducing heat and energy demand. Covering the two longest façades—east and west—it mitigates direct morning and afternoon sun exposure, maintains diffused daylight, prevents overheating, and lowers energy use while enhancing air quality and reducing noise. Inspired by traditional South Indian verandas, it serves as a green community veranda that fosters stress-relief.
Efficient construction and operations
The most effective solutions are often simple, low-cost and locally sourced. This project prioritizes recycled construction waste, particularly left overs from Bangalore's numerous construction sites. Repurposing abundant stone left overs into façade elements (planters) and cladding minimizes extraction and transport emissions, reinforcing circular economy principles. As an effective passive cooling strategy, the open green façade acts as a natural insulator—filtering pollutants, absorbing noise, and regulating temperature—while significantly reducing energy demand and avoiding high-energy mechanical systems. Additionally, large pinewood industrial packaging boxes are repurposed into doors, windows, shutters, furniture, and partition walls.
Landscape & Biodiversity Integration
Before the intervention, the site is in a dense, rapidly developing area of Bangalore, with narrow dry streets and almost no public parks or squares. Biodiversity is minimal, and the lack of greenery worsens air pollution, heat buildup, and habitat loss. Post-intervention, the living façade and planted public space introduce native plants, selected for their adaptability to Bangalore’s climate, creating microhabitats for pollinators, birds, and insects. This green layer restores ecological balance, improves urban cooling, enhances air quality, and strengthens biodiversity networks. By reducing heat retention, filtering pollutants, and absorbing noise, it fosters a healthier, resilient microclimate and encourages engagement and stewardship.
Land use & Transformation
Before the intervention, the neighborhood lacks accessible public spaces, and its land use is fragmented, with fenced green pockets. The highly dense urban fabric of Bangalore's rapid growth has left little room for inclusive spaces, reinforcing spatial constraints. Post-intervention, the project optimizes vertical land use, transforming a privately owned plot into a multi-functional asset, fostering community and sustainability. On the ground floor, a flexible public space functions as a green auditorium, open to all and adaptable to various uses, allowing the community to reclaim public space in a neighborhood lacking it. Additionally, the green façade acts as a climatic buffer, improving thermal regulation and social connectivity.
Thriving Communities

Participatory Design
The project engages stakeholders through a 2-phase participative process to gather the community’s aspirations, ensuring social sustainability and shared decision-making. Phase 1 (02/2022) involved a public consultation where 4 urban scenarios were presented. Community feedback identified the need for a ground floor as a public space. Phase 2 (09/2024) involved a Lukasa Workshop, where community members of all ages created physical models with recycled materials to shape the architectural program. People specifically advocated for the inclusion of sport, women’s safe space and business opportunities. The public construction site launch (12/2024) was a celebration of the community's contribution and its powerful impact on the project design..
Community Impact and Resilience
During the two-phase participatory process, participants advocated for green public spaces, with children requesting more room for sports, play, and reunion. Therefore, the ground floor became a green amphitheater, fostering cultural exchange and providing a safe, vehicle-free space for community activities, events, and economic opportunities. A women’s group also claimed the cafeteria as both a source of income—through cuisine reflecting their cultural identity—and a space for empowerment and mental health, supported by nearby medical staff. Therefore, the workshop resulted in a much-needed safe space run by and for women. Finally, the green facade, accessible to all, serves as a visible reminder of the vital role of nature in urban life.
Viable Economics

Financial Feasibility
The project faces financial challenges as its homeless clientele cannot afford treatment, requiring free services that strain resources. Limited public funding increases reliance on CSR donations, philanthropy, and new government partnerships. As income-generating activities, the project includes a restaurant run by community women, a pharmacy, a small clinic, a market, an open gym, and affordable paid services in the House-Hospital. Volunteers and homeless individuals help run operations, reducing costs. Finally, the cost-efficient design uses construction and industrial waste, with granite waste for planters and cladding, and pinewood packaging for joinery. The green facade lowers energy costs. The structure is simple and rationalized.
Uplifting Places

Aesthetic Qualities and Cultural Integration
As inspired by Kintsugi—the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold—the project reclaims leftover materials, turning abandoned stone fragments into planters that shape an expressive green façade, symbolizing beauty and renewal while honouring Bengaluru's stone carving tradition. Located in Avalahalli, a former quarry hub, the broken stone façade also pays tribute to its industrial legacy. This design gesture mirrors the shelter’s mission—a place where broken individuals, once rejected by society, can heal, rebuild, and regain dignity. It tells a story of imperfection, resilience, and care. By making an invisible community visible, the architecture transforms flaws and past traumas into beauty and strength, just as Kintsugi does.