Quark
Campus Buildings
Quark was a canteen born out of the students’ interest in the early 1980s. The building was located between the hostels Saraswathi and Godavari in the hostel zone. The canteen would open late in the evening, allowing students to grab a post-dinner snack or a hot drink. In an article in The Hindu, former IITian Vijaysree Venkatraman writes that the idea for the canteen arose out of the students’ desire to have a separate building which looked different from the rest of the buildings in the IIT Madras campus. The article mentions how Quark turned out to be a hub for cyclone relief in 1985 when people residing in the villages of Velachery and Taramani were given help from students who gathered at Quark. The building has grown and now accommodates a multi-cuisine restaurant run by a restaurant chain.
The name ‘Quark’ was given by Prof. Achuthan (Mathematics Department) owing to the small size of the building. Prof. P. S. Rao and his colleague Prof. P. K. Aravindan, both from the Structural Engineering Department, were entrusted with the responsibility of building the canteen. Prof. Rao recalls that some of the students also helped in constructing the structure.
Album 0049 does not have a photograph of the Student Activities Centre (SAC) which was completed in 1983, but it does have a photograph of Quark, which was completed around 1980. Thus the date of the album is probably 1981 or 1982.
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