CEPT Archives: for Architecture, Planning & Design in India

𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗞𝗼𝗵𝗻 𝗱𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗖𝗘𝗣𝗧 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 

Bernard Kohn generously donated his architectural works, including his early pedagogical material from the School of Architecture, now CEPT University, to the CEPT Archives. The contribution process was finalised in May 2024 by Kartikeya Shodhan, Head of CEPT Archives, and Saman Quraishi, Assistant Professor, CEPT University.

Born in France in 1931, Bernard Kohn trained at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania under Louis I. Kahn before arriving in Ahmedabad in 1962. Alongside B.V. Doshi and R.N. Vakil, he co-founded the School of Architecture and helped shape its experimental pedagogy rooted in direct engagement with people, sites, and lived realities. His work extended from teaching to urban and participatory design projects in India and France.

The collection was facilitated through the support of Kohn’s family and researcher Joonoh Kim, whose engagement with Kohn’s work began during his exchange at CEPT University. Part of the collection was also contributed by Professor R. J. Vasavada in 2025. The archives additionally include an oral history interview of Bernard Kohn conducted by the CEPT Archives in August 2014, accessible by writing to the Archives.

Read more:
https://ceptarchives.org/story/bernard-kohn-donates-his-collection-to-cept-archives

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We are deeply saddened to share with you the sad news of demise of architect Sen Kapadia today. He was one of the early and a prominent Mumbai-based architect. We offer our condolences to his family, friends, colleagues and students.

Sen Kapadia commenced his architectural journey by earning a diploma from Sir J. J. College of Arts, Mumbai in 1962, followed by joining the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad in 1963. In 1964, he was awarded the NID Scholarship amongst the team of architects working on the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad project to work with architect Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. He established his own architectural practice in Ahmedabad in 1970. Kapadia also explored modernity across various disciplines such as music, cinema, product design, painting, and architecture in his later years of the 1970s in New York City.

He returned to India in 1980, set up his practice in Mumbai. Apart from his professional quests, Kapadia also founded the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture & Environmental Studies, Mumbai in 1992, fostering student engagement with eminent national and international architects and artists.

He received numerous accolades like the JK Architect of the Year Award, the Research Award for his journal Reflections (1997), Society Magna Award of Excellence (2003), and the MASA Gold Medal for Lifetime Contribution in Architectural Education (2015).

Sen Kapadia Architect: In Pursuance of Meanings, monograph edited by Pinkish Shah published by CEPT Press in 2022, is a reflection on his life and 50+ years of practice.

Sen Kapadia's diverse work can be accessed from the Sen Kapadia Collection catalogued at the CEPT Archives. The collection offers an insight into his architectural work as an architect, writer and pedagogue through a collection of drawings, photographs, renderings. It also offers an understanding of his contribution through books, magazines, and thesis reports.

Dr. G. Sundar, Director of the Roja Muthiah Research Library, Chennai, visited the CEPT Archives.

The visit included a walkthrough of the archival collections at the CEPT Archives. The interaction led to a meaningful exchange on approaches to archiving ephemeral materials, digitisation practices, and evolving modes of archival work.

The Roja Muthiah Research Library (RMRL), Chennai, is a leading institution dedicated to preserving and providing access to South Asian print culture, with a remarkable collection of rare books, periodicals, and ephemera.

Moments from two days of close looking, slow reading, and active questioning at the CEPT Archives Resurrecting Archives Workshop.

Moving through drawings, documents, and fragments, students and participants followed their instincts, tracing and unpacking what the materials held and pointed toward. Each encounter opened up new directions, shaping individual lines of inquiry and reflection, while probing the ways in which architecture is produced.

These images capture parts of that process, where curiosity met material, and where the archive became a space to think through, rather than arrive at, conclusions.

The workshop was curated by Robert Stephens and Saman Quraishi, and was conceived as an extension of the MAHR course Into the Archives: Reading, Reflecting, and Representing.

We would like to thank all the students and participants who engaged with the workshop. We also extend our sincere thanks to Shubra Raje and Sonal Mithal for taking the time to reflect and contribute to the concluding part of the workshop.

A Two-Day Workshop at CEPT Archives
Workshop Curators: Robert Stephens | Saman Quraishi

What happens when we begin to see archives not as static repositories, but as generative spaces?

This two-day workshop invites participants to engage closely with diverse archival material, revisiting it through personal curiosities and architectural questions. Together, participants will explore how architecture is produced, represented, and archived, asking: what gets preserved, what is left out, and how do these choices shape our understanding of history?

Through discussion, hands-on engagement, and reflection, participants will develop their own critical provocations, emerging from what they see, question, and reinterpret. The workshop culminates in a brief exhibition of these responses, opening up new ways of reading and activating the archive.

The workshop is a part of the MAHR: Master’s in Architectural History and Research Course - Into the Archives: Reading, reflecting, and representing

Timings
Day 1 Monday - 30 March 2026 - 1:30 pm to 7:00 pm
Day 2 Tuesday - 31 March 2026 - 10:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Venue: CEPT Archives, Ahmedabad

Limited seats, first-come, first-served.
The workshop is open to all with mandatory registration. Once registered, participants are expected to attend both days and be present for the final discussion.
Registration link 🔗 in bio

On March 17, 2026, CEPT Archives welcomed a group of 25 participants as part of the Strategic Legacy Management: Using History to Create Business Value program, organised by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, from March 16 to 18, 2026. The course was led by Professor Chinmay Tumbe, IIM Ahmedabad Vrunda Pathare, Head of Godrej Archives, and Anders Sjöman from the Centre for Business History, Sweden.

As part of the workshop, the cohort visited various archival institutions in Ahmedabad to explore diverse practices in legacy preservation. At CEPT Archives, participants engaged with a curated selection from the collection, examining how historical materials can illuminate interconnections across time, context, and disciplines.

The visit offered a valuable platform to reflect on the evolving role of archives in shaping institutional memory, cultural identity.

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Open Student Interaction | Conversations on City, Ecology & Commons

Join us for an open interaction with Arvinder Singh and Nidhi Batra, founders of Sehreeti Developmental Practices Foundation, as they share their work at the intersection of cities, communities, and ecological commons.
Through initiatives such as Shehr-e-Mehfil – A City in Verse and Voice, Sehreeti creates spaces where the city is not only analysed but also felt, heard, and spoken back to—through poetry, stories, and collective dialogue.

Their ongoing project “Nurturing Ecological Kinship – Participatory Habitat Study” explores how communities sustain relationships with shared landscapes and commons in the Aravalli Hills region. Conducted in collaboration with Laksh Educational Society, the study documents local ecological practices and cultural traditions in the villages of Mangar and Dhauj.

At a time when commons are increasingly fragmented by urbanisation and changing livelihoods, the project reflects on the idea of “making kin”—rebuilding relationships between people, land, and local ecologies. By documenting traditional knowledge and everyday practices, it asks how communities might revive ecological connections and sustain the commons for future generations.

Open to all students.
Come with curiosity, questions, and a willingness to think about cities, landscapes, and shared futures.

The launch of the exhibition Celebrating 100 Years of Architect Bruno Dias Souza (1925–2025) was accompanied by a discussion - Multiple Modernities: Bruno Souza and the Crafting of a Regional Modern Identity.

The discussion was moderated by Sonal Mithal, introduced by Saman Quraishi, with discussants Shubhra Raje, Fernando Velho, and Lester Silveira. The conversation reflected on how to work with archives that often contain gaps and fragments, and how such materials can be used to build archives and offer new ways of understanding multiple modernities across regions.
The first iteration of the exhibition was held in Goa, and it has now travelled to Ahmedabad, bringing together archival material from the CEPT Archives collection alongside contemporary perspectives on Souza’s work.

A pioneering Goan architect and modernist with a global footprint, Bruno Dias Souza’s career spanned Portuguese Goa and post-independence India. Educated at Columbia and Harvard in the 1950s, he collaborated with leading modern practices such as Kanvinde & Rai and Master, Sathe & Kothari, and later served as Director of the School of Planning and Architecture in the 1980s. His work also extended internationally through roles with ICOMOS, UNESCO, and the World Bank.

Through Souza’s work, the exhibition explores how regional modern identities were shaped through climate, culture, and political context, challenging the idea of a singular narrative of modernism.
The exhibition brings together materials from the CEPT Archives collection and the Goa Collective’s work on Souza, inviting visitors to explore the many contexts that shaped his life and practice.

The exhibition will be open for public viewing from 10 to 13 March, 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., at the Piraji Sagara Basement, CEPT University.

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Dr Dipti Khera and Dr Samira Sheikh along with Daksh from NCBS Archives visited the CEPT Archives on 25 February, 2026. The visit enabled a discussion on archival access, how historians can engage with archives transversally, reading across collections, institutions, and formats to construct layered and critical interpretations.

Dr Dipti Khera is an Associate Professor of Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and an art historian of early modern South Asia with research interests and teaching that integrates longue durée perspectives and Indian Ocean and Eurasian geographies. She is also interdisciplinary trained in museum anthropology and architecture.

Dr Samira Sheikh is an Associate Professor of History at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, USA and an historian with research interests in areas of politics and religion in South Asia from 1200-1950. She is also the fifth Obaid Siddiqi Chair for the academic year 2025-26 at the Archives at National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Bangalore.

𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 | 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐥𝐥
𝐌𝐀𝐇𝐑 𝐗 𝐂𝐄𝐏𝐓 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐋𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬

𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

The lecture is a part of the course 
Into the Archives: Reading, Reflecting, and Representing, led by Saman Quraishi .q

Time: Feb 23, 2026 05:00 PM IST
Zoom Meeting Link L
https://cept-ac-in.zoom.us/j/87999168850?pwd=B0zK4IZg25IUrO1UmO8fa6Wab0r4Jf.1

Meeting ID: 879 9916 8850
Passcode: 396635

In this talk, Anuj Daga reflects on his work to examine how curatorial practice could strategise infrastructures for archival processes within a geography of fragmented knowledge. Drawing on his engagements in research, academia, and writing, he explores how architecture intersects with curatorial thinking to open new modes of inquiry and practice of the contemporary built environment. By situating architectural practice within a broader cultural sphere, he examines how these approaches offer fresh ways to engage with archives, space, culture, and public life.

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Anuj is an architect, writer and curator based in Mumbai. Trained as an architect from Mumbai (2008), he went on to pursue his interests in History & Theory of Architecture at Yale School of Architecture, Yale University (2014).  He has been the Curatorial Assistant for the visual arts project "Young Subcontinent" since first organised by Serendipity Arts Foundation in Goa in 2016 until 2018, as well as 'When is Space? Conversations in Contemporary Architecture' commissioned by the Jawahar Kala Kendra (2018). He was the co-curator of the online festival of Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists (VAICA) during 2021. More recently, he curated the exhibition 'The Waiting Room' for the ICAS13 Conference in Surabaya, Indonesia, as a part of the research initiative 'Youth on the Move' that looks at knowledge production across the Asia-Africa axis.  Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the School of Environment & Architecture, Mumbai. 

To know more about Anuj's work, visit:  http://cargocollective.com/anujdaga, www.anujdaga.blogspot.com

We are pleased to share that, in response to the continued interest and engagement of our audiences, the exhibition Christopher Alexander & CES: Experiments in Practice has been extended and will now be on view until Tuesday, 20 January 2026 at the Lilavati Lalbhai Library, CEPT University.

Following the exhibition inauguration on 25 November 2025, we curated a series of ancillary events to encourage varied forms of engagement with the exhibition.
Teaching and Learning with Christopher Alexander, held on 28 November, was a hybrid session featuring Maggie Moore Alexander, Artemis Anninou, and Anjali Yagnik. The discussion opened up a space for dialogue connecting Alexander’s ideas to the present, how we teach, build, and imagine humane and thoughtful environments today.

This was followed by a curatorial walkthrough with curator Ismet Khambatta on 6 December, which offered insights into the behind-the-scenes decisions and narratives that shaped the exhibition.

The exhibition presents original material from the CES Archive, inviting visitors to explore, reflect, and engage deeply with Christopher Alexander’s work.