150-year-old Gujarat Heritage Building to be Restored as Innovation Centre for Girls

A heritage building project in Ahmedabad’s Khamasa has been taken up to be restored and turned into an innovation centre for underprivileged girls. The derelict building was built almost 150 years ago by a colonial-era architect but suffered huge damage during the 2011 earthquake.

The LxS Foundation in collaboration with partnership with Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry will develop the building and the cost has been estimated to be around Rs 3.2 crores, said Sanskriti Panchal, an architect associated with the project.

“It was a girls’ college but was abandoned following the 2001 earthquake. Thus the government was compelled to shift it to a new building," she was quoted as saying.

Panchal is also a founding member of the LxS Foundation and they reportedly approached Gujarat’s education ministry with the plan to renovate the building in 2018. She also said that every heritage restoration project should work for the public.

“One misconception we all have is that heritage is something that we should be proud of our past. However, I think we need to rewind the fact that heritage is something that respects our past and to be proud of our present and future," she told ANI.

Panchal said the idea is to take the community alongside and work on developing the project so that the former benefits from the building revival.

In several countries off late projects are being undertaken to refurbish old buildings and put them into modern uses, meanwhile also keeping the integrity of the place alive. In a somewhat similar incident, Romanian architect Eugen Vaida launched the Ambulance for Monuments project in

Transylvania. The Ambulance for Monuments races around the Balkan country, giving critical care to as many historical buildings as possible that are in an advanced state of decay before it’s too late.

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