CP Kukreja Foundation for Design Excellence, & Vishal K Dar celebrate 50 yrs of architectural marvel JNU
India Art Fair recently hosted an exhibition to commemorate fifty years of the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus, late master architect CP Kukreja’s design of India’s monumental educational campus.
New Delhi: During India’s post-independence era, various visions emerged to mould a new democracy, utilising tools and mechanisms to propel the nation forward into a modern era. Architecture, a cornerstone of civilisation, served as a multifaceted entity: a reflection of the contemporary epoch, a testament to its creators, and a time capsule. Speaking with the language that architects are best at — drawings and models — the exhibition, The Masterplan, engaged the viewers with narratives that have shaped India and its public. Working with a synergy of art, architecture, and design, it shared the history of Modern India through this journey.
Legendary late architect CP Kukreja’s pivotal and monumental first large-scale commission — Jawaharlal Nehru University — was built in Delhi in the 1970s. The archive exhibition took one through different segments of this journey, witnessing the intersections between architecture, citizenship, and nation-building.
A collaboration between the CP Kukreja Foundation for Design Excellence (CPKF) and Vishal K Dar, the exhibition focused on the emergence of the first South-Asian attempt to create a vast university archetype. The institution is imagined as a micro-city within the southern ridge of the Aravalli hills of New Delhi. Here, on these grounds, India would cultivate students learning to dialogue with the world.
The design of the exhibition was imagined as a studio inside a pavilion that is both didactic and experiential. It explored the architecture of JNU, the context it inhabits, and how the architect has centred the local ecology by integrating the built within it. The exhibition’s highlight was a 10-foot-long hybrid exhibit with JNU’s master plan projected onto it.
Arunima Kukreja, Director at CPKF and ideator of the exhibition, said, “This is the first-ever exhibition organised by CP Kukreja Foundation for Design Excellence on the Jawaharlal Nehru University. The university was the first and largest project to be won by Architect CP Kukreja in the year 1969 through a national competition and is built on a thousand acres and is a symbol of Indian Modernism. Its architecture encapsulates the values of growth, learning, and innovation through its spatial and earthly design.”
Arunima Kukreja is an ardent writer, an interior designer and a philanthropist who heads the CPKA Foundation for Design Excellence, which promotes consciousness in design cutting across genres. A student of history from St. Stephens College, Delhi University, and holding a diploma in environmental law, she was the Creative Head of the series Deciphering Design with Dikshu that aired on Disney+Hotstar
Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi is the foremost university in India and a world-renowned centre for teaching and research. Ranked number one in India by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) with a Grade Point of 3.91 (on a scale of 4), JNU was ranked no 3 among all universities in India by the National Institutional Ranking Framework, Government of India, in 2016 and no 2 in 2017. JNU also received the Best University Award from the President of India in 2017.
Based in New Delhi, CP Kukreja Foundation for Design Excellence has been instrumental in nurturing and promoting design education, research, and innovation in India. Named after the renowned architect and founder, Mr. C.P. Kukreja, the Foundation embodies the principles of innovation, creativity, and resilience to nurture a better tomorrow. Some of the Foundation’s initiatives include the Tale of Two Cities, a series where the Foundation travels the world, exchanging notes from Indian cities with global leaders representing the world’s leading metros.
Other notable initiative of the Foundation includes Liveable Cities for the Future, a compendium of essays co-edited by Managing Principal Dikshu Kukreja and Columbia University Professor Geeta Mehta, and launched at the Think20 Summit in Mysuru.
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Other initiatives are ‘Deciphering Design With Dikshu’, a talk series that creates design discourse with leaders from varied sectors such as heritage, culinary arts, fashion, design, and entrepreneurship, and ‘CP Kukreja Design Trophy’, launched this year as a joint venture with NASA India, provides design and architecture students a platform to unleash their creative potential.
Ar. CP Kukreja was a legendary Architect who made significant contributions to the field of architecture in the last five decades not just in India but also at the global level. What started as his modest two-man firm has today become not only one of India’s largest architectural practices with 200 professionals but has also been recognised amongst the top 100 architecture firms in the world, thereby raising the profile of Indian Architecture internationally.
Recently appointed as the Honorary Consul General of the Republic of Albania, Dikshu C Kukreja is the Managing Principal of CP Kukreja Architects, one of the world’s largest architecture and urban design firms. He is also the man behind the Ayodhya Redevelopment Vision 2047. His work is rooted in contextuality and driven by a sustainable approach reinforced through innovative technologies.
About Vishal K Dar: Vishal K Dar is an artist based in Gurgaon, known for site-specific projects that deploy computer-programmed lights in large-scale abandoned sites. His works simultaneously invoke the vastly mythic and deeply personal, creating experience territories with digital technologies, architecture and earthly elements. Through placemaking, he instils a sense of dreamlike quality in his works while still allowing them to address contemporary issues.
