College gets award for church documentation

MANGALURU: The Council of Architecture (COA), New Delhi, has awarded a city-based architecture college for documenting the 450-year-old Church of Our Lady of Rosary.
This year, COA, New Delhi, introduced a competition for the excellence in documentation of architectural heritage in India. The Srinivas School of Architecture, Valachil Mangaluru, documented the Rosario Cathedral, one of the first Roman Catholic Churches in the region, for which they secured the national award for the Best Documented Project.

The winning team of 12 students comprised Adithya Hebbar, Harsha Raj, Amrita Adiga, Krithika Holla, Thanvi D C, Tilak Raj, Neha B, Sumukha Achar, Vishnu Rajgopal, Narayan V S, Ganesh Prabhu and Pramod Prabhu, under the guidance of Caroline D’Souza, conservation architect and associate professor.

Speaking to STOI on why they chose Rosario Cathedral, Caroline said that they documented it because it’s an important part of the cultural heritage of Mangalureans. “Winning the award was made more special because the cathedral completed 450 years since its inception. Documentation is one of the foremost steps towards conservation of a heritage property which is done through detailed measure drawing of the building which leads to the production of scaled drawings. This was achieved using simple measuring tapes along the horizontal plane. A laser distometer was used to achieve vertical dimensions. At the outset, the team tried to understand the historical, architectural and cultural significance of the structure, in order to comprehend the task at hand. In addition to this, an intensive archival study, multiple sketches in site and photo documentation of various architectural elements was carried out. There were a number of challenges the team faced in completing the task at hand and adhering to the competition timeline owing to the sheer complexity, scale and volume of the structure,” she explained.

Out of the approximately 150 colleges that took part from all over India, the top 25 were selected from each zone. This group was further filtered and the top 10 colleges were selected to make a presentation to the council jury members at Haryana recently. A certificate of excellence and Rs 75,000 were given to the winners.

It took the team one month to complete the process.

They used measuring tapes for measuring the horizontal dimensions, and a distometer to measure the vertical dimensions. The height of the dome and the cross at the apex was measured via getting to the drum of the dome by using a ladder, and dropping the laser beam in both directions.

Exhibition on church

The parishioners, who will now like to take this forward to the community, will organise an exhibition of the competition entry at the Rosario Cathedral premises on January 20.

Caroline pointed out that the heritage of coastal Karnataka has largely been ignored by the mainstream society, and most residents are unaware of the unique local history along the Konkan coast.