‘Reimagining Heritage’: Project by IAD Students

Heritage in Design is a project by 3rd year students of Interior Architecture & Design, IIAD. Purpose of the project was to study the architectural and spatial attributes of historical monuments to learn from precedent and understand how they could be reimagined as public interactive spaces in contemporary use. Site chosen for testing conceptual ideas were four monuments within Sunder Nursery, New Delhi. The selected monuments were Garden Pavilion, Sunderwala Mahal, Lakkarwala Burj and Sunder Burj.

Under the mentorship of Prof. Snehanshu Mukherjee, Course Leader for Interior Architecture and Design, Madhu Pandit, Associate Professor, and Mani Sharma, Assistant Professor, the students presented out-of-the-box designs for transforming historical sites without altering the existing structures in any manner. The design intent of the project was to increase visitor engagement with the historic structures while preserving the original architecture of these buildings. The designs have emerged from extensive study and research into historical and socio-cultural issues and their relevance to the present context.

With the collaboration of The Aga Khan Trust for Culture students exhibited their work at Sunder Nursery amidst the monuments. The exhibition displayed architectural designs and ideas of historical monuments reimagined as interactive spaces. On the inauguration day, students demonstrated their concepts to visitors and faculty members. Students also provided them with an informative walk-through of the four monuments explaining the proposed design ideas. This created an interactive and immersive exhibition experience for the visitors.

Prof. Snehanshu Mukherjee, Course Leader, Interior Architecture and Design, emphasised how the students' interventions proposed a solution for repurposing these structures without causing any damage and all proposed measures could be completely reversed without any harm to the monuments.

Usha Patel, Director of Academics at IIAD, highlighted the project visits to Sunder Nursery and the students' work in reimagining the monuments in the IIAD studios. She expressed pride in the students' and teachers' efforts and praised their achievements.

Dr. Jitin Chadha, Founder and CEO of IIAD, also appreciated the work done by the students and faculty members, and said that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the students to showcase their talent at such a beautiful public park that was visited by residents of Delhi as well as by people from across the world .

This initiative by the students of interior Architecture & Design, successfully highlighted the importance of India's cultural legacy while presenting innovative methods and concepts for popularising the lesser known historical structures, generating a curiosity about them amongst laypeople.