Nalini Thakur

Nalini Thakur talks about her childhood interests and life, being deeply interested in pop music, reading, and recalls an earlier interaction with Piloo Mody as a student, along with her days at studying in Delhi at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA). She notes how even though their curriculum didn’t focus on local architecture or studying things that were around them, her interest in observing her surroundings helped her peak in the field. Speaking of continuing her studies in conservation, she talks about the way the field has evolved over years because practitioners are not applying themselves as they should. She then notes how she learnt how to teach the subject and then goes on to describe her teaching journey in detail. She mentions the different courses she taught at SPA, Delhi, after which she shifted to a practice in conservation. She details her struggle while pursuing her passion in the field of conservation, as well as the legal and other battles she had to engage in. 
Talking about her early education before joining SPA, she begins talking about the various projects she undertook both at SPA and professionally. She also describes the challenges she faced along the way and the mistakes she made, from which she gained significant learnings. She further notes that one of her design strengths was working on housing projects and shares her comments on it. She also recalls why the topic selected for her thesis was not a good choice at the time. Talking about her association with SPA, she recalls interacting with Cyrus Jhabvala and how he guided her. On her teaching experience, she mentions all the support and learning she gained along the way, and concludes by commenting on how things have changed.   

Nalini talks about how she started learning Italian and soon got an opportunity to visit Italy, where she was able to study classical Italian architecture and explore her love for history and heritage. She was further able to imbue this in her teaching pedagogy as well. Talking about her teaching experience and the courses she taught, she goes into detail and speaks of the way she approached and evolved the curriculums, and shares her observations from that time. Mentioning the masters programme she enrolled in at the University of York, she begins to describe the experience in depth and recalls her journey as an international student. She notes how she met a lot of people and spent her time travelling and exploring. She recalls specific interactions she had, for instance, meeting Adam Hardy who was giving a talk in Birmingham, and other associations she made while she was there. She further talks about the culture and people she met there and her impressions of the country. Commenting on her personal design and research approach, she talks about the way she wrote her thesis and the challenges she faced while doing so. Concluding the session, she continues to share her thoughts on education pedagogy and how she does not think in language, but follows a more abstract mathematical approach.

Upon her return to India in 1986, Nalini Thakur recalls facing a challenging situation at the hands of SPA, in regards to getting into the conservation department, even though she had gone for higher studies with a different understanding with the School. He expresses her dejection at the situation at the time, and moves on to talk about her professional engagements outside the academic world, with organisations like Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), the Heritage Trust of Baroda, and others. She details her professional journey working on different projects at the time and describes the project details and challenges faced. She mentions working at the National Archives of India and comments on the Central Vista Project. She provides details of this project and talks about other engagements that followed. 
Coming back to her association with SPA as a teacher, she talks about her journey there and how she retired in 2017, as well as shares details of her work with the Conservation Department. She recalls how she kept an ongoing engagement with her students and was very tough when it came to mentoring them, and recounts the various ways in which she tried to instil her own values on conservation within the department and faculty. She notes how at the end she was a recipient of immense love and respect from her students. As a response to whether or not her gender played a role within her professional journey, she notes how she faced a lot of hostility from male peers and goes into detail about the various challenges that came her way.

The session starts with a discussion on Nalini’s approach towards applying mathematics as a means of thinking through the process of heritage and conservation. She compares the science of both mathematics and architecture in the light of the latter being a commercial trade and explains how she views the concepts of arithmetics etc. to understand design and conservation. Speaking of how she taught from the perspective of how Indian architecture is both historic and contemporary, she goes on to describe her teaching pedagogy in detail. Talking about a Delhi-based project that she undertook when Delhi was declared a state, she describes how she worked on a law that would focus on providing a heritage status and required resources for the state to establish conservation initiatives, and how the entire thing panned out due to political and other influences. She further talks about her continued efforts in conservation discourse and practice and provides examples of initiatives she worked on while commenting on the administrative and political drawbacks in implementation and planning that she observed. 
While recalling some details of further projects, she mentions her association of working with Karan Grover and how she cherished their teamwork. Delving more into her work with world heritage sites, she mentions her approach and how she envisions each project, the responsibility involved, and the due ownership that belongs to entire communities when it comes to heritage sites. Concluding the session, she mentions how these sites are managed, and the policies and laws that can help regulate their administration more effectively.

Beginning the session with a detailed discussion about the Majuli project, Nalini Thakur details how it became a heritage site, the several intricate aspects of the project and its cultural relevance, as well as the challenges she faced. She also shares the history of the project and how the site was first considered a natural site, and the several political issues that were dealt with while managing that site. She explains how her methods were questioned at times too but that she remained confident about her work. The role and accomodation within government bodies is then discussed, regarding whether these spaces make adequate use of the consultant services they hire. Nalini then goes on to discuss her thesis project in detail and notes how it was perhaps the first ever conservation thesis that came out of SPA. She remarks how it was a great learning opportunity, and goes on to share the minute details of the project with enthusiasm. She also shares the drawbacks in her thesis conclusion and notes how she was supposed to arrive at an architectural conclusion for the project, even while following a conservation and management approach, but that she was unable to do so. Talking about the conclusion that she did write, she describes how she recognised the area she worked on as a historical settlement and goes on to describe her research and how she arrived at her hypothesis. Talking about institutions in the country and their mention in her work so far, she shares her comments on their status in the country, and calls for decentralisation of institutions in the country. Discussing the role of public sector bodies in supporting and working on similar projects, she notes the role that private sector bodies can play but also stresses the importance of making the larger public administration aware about these efforts (in conservation and more). She then concludes by mentioning the role and position of NGOs in this space and a need for heritage education and awareness at institutional level.

Continuing the discussion on how NGOs and private sector organisations approach heritage studies and on-site projects, Nalini reiterates the importance of having a foundational understanding of heritage and conservation practices, no matter the approach. The discussion then tilts towards the role and impact of organisations like the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), and how they choose to manage monumental heritage in the country. At this point, Nalini talks about the corrupt practices that are ongoing in the conservation projects and further talks about the responsibility to support and grow these projects, which lies with both public and private sector organisations and groups. She also notes how there is a need for stringent laws concerning this field, and the parallels that exist and should be catered to between conservation/heritage work and engineering and town planning studies. She mentions the ways in which she is trying to inculcate these changes in the system, noting the administrative flaws in functioning and the way she has adapted to challenge them. She also remarks how education within all these fields has mainly turned into commercial negotiations on numbers, and that the same is the state of architectural education in India. She shares her opinions and observations on the role and work of bodies like UNESCO at the national and global level, and the drawbacks in their approach. Concluding the session, she briefly mentions her efforts towards working on a conservation policy for India, and how it developed in York.

The session begins with Nalini Thakur talking about her contributions to academia while teaching at SPA, and insights into teaching which she devoted almost her entire career to. She provides details about the ways in which her teaching work and her conservation efforts intersected, her comments on the heritage walks conducted as part of the Delhi conservation project, and the concept she developed called Active Learning. She recounts her engagements and experiences during the time she spent as the Secretary of the Delhi Conservation Society, and describes her observations of that time. Repeatedly through these discussions, she notes how many of the people who engaged with these projects and its activities monumentally lacked any knowledge whatsoever about heritage and conservation practices, which helped her form ideas on what a good education should entail. She then goes on to talk about further projects, their challenges and outcomes, as well as shortcomings. 
Going into further detail about her efforts in conservation studies, she lists out the ways in which she has tried to inculcate a good awareness of the subject within her pedagogy while teaching architecture and conservation together, and then goes on to detail the historical and anthropological significance of conservation studies.

Discussing how the theoretical insights and understandings she gained from her observations in conservation and from working with both private and public sector bodies form a practical, teachable part of her pedagogy, Nalini asks that we take a look at her studio projects and courses. Noting how her studio classes link the theoretical insights to practical applicable work in the field, she goes on to describe her approach in detail and mentions that she cannot force this kind of learning.