Anna University recently issued a circular to all heads of departments and centres to remove “condemnable and waste items strewn on the open terraces” on an “urgent basis” before the end of monsoon.
The circular said such clutter and condemnable items were causing “severe water stagnation leading to heavy seepage problems in the building endangering the building and the inmates”. The circular comes in the wake of complaints from some of the employees.
Sometime ago, lightning struck the main building, a heritage structure, and the dome was damaged. With funds from the State government, the repair work has started.
On Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority’s website, four buildings in the Madras Engineering College Complex have been listed as heritage structures. They include the main building, audio visual research centre (now Centre for Faculty and Professional Development - CFPD), electrical laboratory and the portion that houses the traffic and urban systems engineering department. While the main building is classified as a Grade 1 structure, the rest are described as Grade 2a.
Grade 1 structures are considered buildings of national or historical importance and no large-scale changes within the structure are permitted; whereas grade 2(a) structures permit internal changes and can be reused but subject to strict scrutiny.
All the special aspects of the structure, for which it is included in Heritage Grade 2, should be conserved, according to rules governing preservation of heritage structures.
The CFPD was originally the residential quarters of the British Principals of the Madras Engineering College. Now the structure is used by two departments. The ground floor was once used to conduct M.Sc. Science and Technology Communication course with DST funding under the Department of Media Sciences.
Prior to that, it served as a computer literacy centre funded by Microsoft, under the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. The interiors of the building had periodically undergone changes to accommodate the needs of the departments housed in them.
Although the building’s exterior had received a coat of whitewash, vegetation had grown on the roof and the debris around the building had led to mosquito menace. Some users of the building said whenever there was heavy rain, water entered it. There have been instances when snakes were spotted inside the building.
