Project Description

"Some places do not die—they wait, quietly, for the day someone will return to carry their past forward, to begin a healing that mends not only walls, but memory and time itself.”

In Bikrampur’s historic Kasba, crumbling walls still breathe the past. Among them stands Kali Bari, the two-hundred-year-old home of artisan Nakori Poddar, once alive with the scent of carved wood, the rhythm of chisels, and the warmth of shared craft. The space remembers a time when skill was livelihood, when architecture held identity, and when the family’s hands shaped both beauty and survival. Today, economic imbalance and neglect have left it abandoned, facing demolition that would erase not only a building, but a legacy of memory, culture, and community connection.

The design reimagines Kali Bari as a craft production house and cultural commons, reconciling past and present by preserving what survives, stabilizing what is fragile, and reviving what is lost through carefully placed additions. New structures rise only in ruined zones, separated from the old with a shadow gap — a spatial cue of Phenomenology, engaging memory through light, shadow, and texture. Built on lightweight steel posts with prefabricated refurbished decks, their façades follow the grammar of Bikrampur’s traditional wooden houses so local craftsmen can construct them with their own hands — an act of Empowerment Psychology.

Modular spaces for workshops, storage, and display expand or contract with need, restoring economic agency. The shared courtyard remains open to the sky, a setting for Attention Restoration Theory, where breeze, daylight, and informal gathering replenish cognitive focus. Craft workspaces evoke Flow Theory, immersing artisans in making, while retained circulation paths strengthen Place Attachment Theory, connecting past and present movement. The project itself embodies Cultural Resilience, ensuring skills and identity survive through built form.

Here, healing is not stillness but revival — the hum of tools, the rhythm of hands, the return of stories. It proves that ruins can be resources, and that wounds in memory, culture, and community can be mended together. And if one forgotten house can heal an entire neighborhood, what other ruins across our land are still waiting to breathe again?