The Knowledge Centre, located through the master planning efforts of RB and the Trust provides significant opportunities for public engagement through its location, Sitting on the western face of the more ornate ramparts of the fort, within a depth of approximately 14 m. its location, sandwiched among fort walls offers backward and forward views of fort walls from a potential terrace. The sunker nature of the project provides for a cooler protected building mass and the lowest portion of the site connects to the lesser visited Chokelao Baug. These were the opportunities we recognized and have attempted to address in a 21st century repository of knowledge of the past

Mehrangarh Fort Culture Knowledge and Visitor's Centre

Culture Architecture I Jodhpur, Rajasthan

Area 26,694 Sq.ft

Status Competition 2018

Client Mehrangarh Museum Trust

Team Shimul Javeri Kadri, Sarika Shetty, Bhavin Patel, Sapna Rohra, Namita Kara

The conservation areas on the upper level, get entirely natural light, the two archival floors below are protected from heat and water by their position- floating between the ground level and the relative heat of the uppermost level.

Program: Conservation, Archive Centre, Digital Study And Conference, Multipurpose Hall, Administration.

The Mehrangarh Fort has a unique position as a contemporary public space. It has transformed itself over the years into a repository of information and cultural exchange.

Drawing from past and connecting narratives

Its role as a democratic institution for public engagement is being forged by current interventions and one can only rejoice at the potential for this transformation in involving the citizens of the city of Jodhpur as well as visitors from across the globe. The fort with its organic growth across five centuries expresses each unique era through built form. We must then express the current moment while respecting the traditions of the past.

Public engagement and architecture

Mehrangarh fort culture knowledge centre architectural design derives from the architecture of the fort, using stone columns and beams follows rhythmic grids- often to a distinct rhythm, and often random. We have drawn from these rhythms in the facade of the building -a lime plaster & painted wall building that opens lightly on the north and south facades, with its contemporary grid allowing balconies and pause points. And the more closed west facade opens only at select locations to the views of the bagh and the western ramparts flanking the bagh.

The location and the program offer a quiet but dynamic opportunity to gently infuse the fort with more possibilities for public involvement. The building will sit immersed within the existing walls- and open itself to the possibilities of discovery and cross-pollination.