AMC Zonal Office

The South-West zonal office of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, at Prahladnagar.

Two brick end blocks hold the building at either side, and everything between them is glass and pale render — window bands running unbroken from one pier to the other, floor above floor, with the shadow line of each slab drawn across them. It is a plain modern elevation, and the plainness is the point: nothing on it is decorative and nothing on it will date.

The Corporation's seal is set into the brick on the left, cut at the size of a window and lit by the same sun as the rest of the wall. Above it, the flag. Neither is applied to the building; both were built into it.

At ground level a flat canopy runs the full width of the front on slim columns, past the doors and out to a drum of brick at the far end. A municipal office is a building the public has to enter, often on the worst day of their week, and that canopy is where they wait out the sun. It is the most-used part of the building, and it is the part the elevation gives the most room to.