Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya also known as Gandhi/Sabarmati Ashram was one of the many residences of Mahatma Gandhi and was later established as a memorial museum. The architecture of the ashram is still renowned for being different from that of a typical museum which doesn’t please many visitors in terms of design and aesthetics.
The Sabarmati Ashram is located beside the Sabarmati riverfront, 4kms away from the town hall. The space stretches up to 36 acres of land, consisting of different museums, memorials, a library, and many artifacts and photos related to Gandhi. The main building rests on a garden with lush green grass surrounded by tree plantations on its edges and a walkway around it. The garden is surrounded by the river on one side and the main road on another side from which people enter. The context gives a very warm feeling because of the absence of tar roads, cement, and concrete. Everything seems to be built from traditional methods which have a warm color and a humble effect on people’s minds. The other side of the main road is built like a village, with small huts built of mud with a huge common ground used for gatherings. 

It was designed in 1963 by the famous architect Charles Correa who was just 28 at the time. He was assigned the task of studying Gandhi’s values and philosophies in order to design the ashram. Correa used the words of Gandhi to design, “I don’t want my house to be walled on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my houses as freely as possible but I refused to be blown off my feet by any of them.”

It has a grid organization overall as it is a repetition of a single square module. Each of them has its own importance as different modules have a different relationship with other modules and comprise different information and artifacts. If we observe the grid closely, the squares are placed in a central organization with the pool being the center leading to other places. Every enclosed and semi-open space is of the same importance as the parts together form the whole building. The organization tries to give each module one or more open sides which keep it connected to nature, more ventilated and lit up. The whole building is unsymmetric and follows a random structure. Symmetry can only be applied to some fragments of the building. The open courtyards, pools, and trees make the grid interesting. A single module is completely symmetric with a 6-meter square footprint, and a pyramidal wooden roof 2-meters above the floor. An individual module of the building is the same but the nature of spaces changes per unit. Some are fully open, some have roofs and no walls, and some are fully enclosed. The closed spaces are used to display artifacts, paintings, and other valuable objects whereas the open spaces consist of numerous photos, posters, and pieces of writing. Closed spaces have louvers for smooth ventilation in directions that align with the natural wind flow.
The Ashram is an example of a ‘Path passes through’ as the corridor formed by the grid of square-shaped modules acts as the circulation space as well as a display for exhibits of the museum. There’s no space that is designated only as a corridor and not an exhibition gallery. The circulation of the building is a little random, the grid is designed to make the visitors cross the central pool multiple times like a courtyard of a village. The orientation of tiles and columns directs the people to go further inside the building. This is done by placing the longer side of the tile along the East-West direction and the columns look perfectly square while being ‘H’ shaped as we move in the South-North axis, that’s how he created a sense of movement in all directions. Here, Circulation is not a fixed path through which a person will move, it’s something that depends on the decision of the visitor. A person has to meander through the building to cover all the corners so it has infinite combinations of circulation which one might take due to several reasons, placement of tiles and columns being one. The experience of moving through the building is completely different from any other built form as this is completely open from the sides. The courtyards and pool connect the visitors to nature at a level that the feeling of being inside a building is lost and the space doesn’t feel interior at all. The low placement of the ‘U’ shaped beams creates a sense of humbleness while meandering through the space. Due to the low height of the beam, people tend to walk slowly and not run/jump inside the building. The low-height beams also create curiosity in the viewer’s mind about what the sky or the trees would look like, making one walk to the edge of the square to take a look from the courtyards. 
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