Palaces, forts, tombs, mausoleums and memorials; often writ in the finest stones, remain guarded, protected, preserved and extolled for generations to witness and revere. The minds that envisage them and the hands that make them, however, find solace within modest abodes, the traces of which can only be imagined by tracking their 'non-presence' at the edges of historic roads and routes, under the footings of more contemporary constructions or in the sentimental lores spun into mystical tales by elders. It is precisely this 'non-presence'—or rather a completely inconspicuous one—of common heritage in a tangible form that often evades attention when larger discussions on preservation and heritage commence.

Such conversations, albeit, prop up, as one witnesses the changing cityscape and morphology of one’s town. It emerges from discussions on how single-screen cinema houses are being replaced by multiplexes within malls, older routes to the main city are being diverted by flyovers and street-side shops are disappearing along with a barrage of trees. Against the onslaught of this ceaseless spatial flux, it is essential to hold on to certain tangible vestiges that can root individuals, cities and nations in their land. And, despite popular consensus and common practice diktats, this rootedness does not solely come from preserving and honouring landmark buildings.

Instead, it is rather imperative to uphold the value of everyday architectural heritage—a sentiment that forms the ethos of Indian conservation architect Aishwarya Tipnis and her eponymous practice. At the core of Tipnis’ work lies the intent to democratise the discipline of heritage conservation and restoration in ways that can encourage people to protect, preserve and restore archaic, non-monumental structures around them.

Founded in 2007, Aishwarya Tipnis Architects (ATA) is a Delhi-based architectural practice that straddles disparate domains such as urban conservation and regeneration, building restoration and architectural design. Stemming from a place of making holistic decisions, the Indian architecture practice engages with multidisciplinary professionals such as architects, historians, geographers, interpretation planners, graphic designers, engineers, craftsmen and more.

Backtracking only slightly to Tipnis’ overarching intent of making heritage sites relevant for local people and facilitating the scope for easy conservation, we witness the Indian architect’s consistent attempts at organising relevant tools and resources for students, practitioners and the common populace alike via workshops, blogs, books and manuals—all aimed at demystifying the processes comprised in heritage conservation. The most recent of these initiatives is The Restoration Toolbox, an open-source digital platform that empowers citizens and local communities to restore, reuse and maintain everyday heritage buildings. The platform is designed to help citizens at every step of the process—from conceptualising, designing, financing, to implementing a project through collaboration and co-creation. While the toolbox is designed to assist homeowners in repairing structures in real time, it stands to serve as a pedagogical tool for students at the same time.

The toolbox was developed in response to the restrictions faced by architects and experts during the COVID-19 pandemic that limited their mobility—particularly of workers and other professionals—to the site. Tipnis, with the help of various collaborators, designed the digital toolkit encapsulating graphic aides, manuals and videos to help workers on site implement required conservation processes. Further, by pivoting the manuals on construction systems employed to build using common materials, Tipnis ensured their usability as a resource and guide for heritage restoration and also as a template for new construction employing traditional knowledge systems.

In 2022, The Restoration Toolbox was selected as one of the eight most innovative ideas in international cultural relations by European Spaces of Culture by European National Institutes of Culture (EUNIC). As part of this project, the platform was further developed to be made accessible to professionals, craftsmen, policy makers, students and entrepreneurs. Further, the processes that led to the development of this project are published as a book, The Restoration Toolbox - Restoring: Conversations, launched in 2024.

STIR interacted with Tipnis over a video call to gain further understanding of The Restoration Toolbox. Edited excerpts from the interview follow.

Almas Sadique: Work on The Restoration Toolbox seems to have robustly begun in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this project has been long in the making, perhaps since ATA’s work in Chandannagar in 2010. Can you go back to the first idea that you had regarding The Restoration Toolbox and how it evolved from there?

Aishwarya Tipnis: The Restoration Toolbox thread has been very much part of our philosophy of work, which was to make heritage relevant to local people. In 2014, while working on the Haveli project in Old Delhi, we opened the doors to an ongoing project for students for the first time. We had about 100 students who came into the Haveli to learn how to make lime, to conserve and restore. At that point in time, about 10-12 years ago, conservation was not very popular. The methods of conservation were not in the open. Only a few experts knew how to go about it. So, the seed for The Restoration Toolbox was sown probably 10 to 15 years ago. With every project we undertook, it just intensified.

The need to make resources accessible to people interested in heritage, whether trained or not, is the backbone of The Restoration Toolbox. So, you see, we also built on that idea on the side, for instance with Jugaadopolis, which [is a medium to explore, understand and appreciate the heritage of our cities and cultures in all their forms and find creative ways to make it all relevant to the new generation], stems from the idea that there needs to be more capacity building, more outreach and free resources available for people who may be interested in heritage, but either don’t have the resources to engage a professional or may not be professionals themselves. You see, a lot of buildings in India are conserved by just engineers or contractors or the homeowners themselves. So, the whole idea of The Restoration Toolbox was to share the correct resources with people who are interested in doing something about their heritage but are doing it all by themselves.

There are lots of champions of the built environment. Individually, everybody is doing great work. Maybe what is really needed is to bring all of these champions on the same page and take collective action so that the impact can be bigger. – Aishwarya Tipnis

Almas: Tell us a little about The Restoration Toolbox and how the toolbox is generally used to approach a given project by stakeholders.

Aishwarya: The toolbox currently comprises 15 DIY manuals on 15 different materials, such as wood, stone, brick, roofing material, structural timber, etc. It has been co-created with students across India through our internship programmes that ran in 2021 and 2022. These manuals are available on our website for free and anybody can look at them. The idea is that if a particular homeowner wants to repair their balcony and has employed a contractor or craftsman for the job, they can look at this DIY resource and know the correct steps to follow, what materials to use, how to do it, etc.

Also, the platform is segmented into three components. The first one is ‘Risk@Hand’. There may be buildings in our neighbourhoods that may not be monumental but are important from a cultural perspective and are at some kind of risk, structural or otherwise. You can flag such structures on the ‘Risk@Hand’ map on the website. This map can then come in handy for people who may be looking for old structures to open their businesses. The second component, ‘Build a Campaign’, exists to help people and organisations come together to create campaigns to save buildings that might be at risk. The third component is the toolbox itself, which allows stakeholders to seek expert consultation and refer to the material manuals library.

Almas: Tell us a little about the Verdun House in Mussoorie and how The Restoration Toolbox was utilised for its restoration by the owner.

Aishwarya: Verdun House is a 165-year-old bungalow on the Mall Road in Mussoorie that came to us in a very dilapidated state. It’s not a listed building, it’s not under any law as a protected heritage building. This meant that the owner had the choice to restore or demolish it and build something else in its place. The Verdun House came to us as a ‘Risk@Hand’ project where the owner didn't know what to do and we built a sort of project for them along with the students and they were able to implement it themselves.

The Verdun House is a case in point where we demonstrated how the toolbox can be used by a regular person, a homeowner, to restore their own house. We did this as a six-month-long exercise with the Jindal School of Art and Architecture. Students were sent to the site where they worked with the local carpenters to understand how to fix a window, how to do lime plaster, etc. This was done as part of what we call The Restoration Clinic, where the homeowner was hand-held by us through the toolbox and students learnt about restoration techniques, conservation techniques and construction systems, with hands-on learning on the live project. So, it was a double project. While students were learning, the owner was also benefiting from that learning. The project is now complete. This was a pro bono service that we offered and we trained about 22 young architects on this particular project.

Almas: What kind and scale of projects is The Restoration Toolbox best designed to supplement?

Aishwarya: What we were looking at were buildings of everyday heritage. We are not looking at listed monuments. We haven’t designed The Restoration Toolbox to restore buildings such as the Taj Mahal. It is essentially designed to restore everyday heritage buildings that exist in every city, which give a particular character to the cities and that seem to be abandoned by authorities. These can be homes, schools, hospitals, temples, etc. Often, the onus to preserve these structures falls directly on the owner, right? So, we aim to help owners and heritage enthusiasts with relevant resources.

Almas: How many projects have been initiated via The Restoration Toolbox? Apart from ATA, who are some other architects involved in these projects?

Aishwarya: We've done extensive capacity building workshops. In fact, we took The Restoration Toolbox to NASA (National Association of Students of Architecture) in 2023, where almost 4000 students played with the toolbox and came up with some schemes and proposals about what they wanted to do with the buildings. We also took the toolbox to Kolkata and Mumbai, where various architects interacted with it. Another example is that of Red Badi in Kolkata, which is an old building that they have now converted into a cafe. The owners used some of our manuals to restore their cast iron staircases and other components in the building. Neither Red Badi, nor Verdun House were an ATA project. We simply provided the resources and manuals for the former and mentorship for the latter. We also collaborated with INTACH on the ‘Risk@Hand’ component.

Apart from these, we tried to reach a lot of architects who were happy to play with the toolbox and list a bunch of buildings at risk, but no one utilised it to the full extent. I don't think anybody has taken the initiative to build a campaign on it. While there are lots of projects that were put on the ‘Risk@Hand’ map, not many have materialised into proper projects. This is also very symptomatic of how heritage conservation works in our country. It's very rare for a project to move forward. A lot of things just remain in the ideation stage and that's what the toolbox is also showing us in the digital world.

Although The Restoration Toolbox as a project may have ended, the philosophy of the toolbox will continue into other projects that we undertake as part of Jugaadopolis, with the simple aim of making heritage accessible to anyone who wants to do anything with it. – Aishwarya Tipnis

Almas: What are some learnings from this project?

Aishwarya: The one lesson we did learn is that just a digital tool is not enough. There needs to be a physical manifestation of the tool. That is the only reason that the Verdun House project really worked, because there was a mentorship that Jugaadopolis offered along with the toolbox.

Almas: How does a toolkit such as this deal with the many urban issues, including pollution, climate change, etc, in India today?

Aishwarya: The toolbox in itself builds on the ideology of circularity, addressing climate change, because we believe that repair is better than replacement. So, the whole idea of The Restoration Toolbox is to help people repair their buildings, extend their life and avoid or postpone demolition. Therefore, The Restoration Toolbox is an important plug point towards achieving sustainability in cities, to giving employment to craftsmen, to upskilling them, to creating an ecosystem that promotes preservation, repair, sustainability and livability in our cities rather than completely demolishing them and making new structures that create urban problems and pollution-related issues may arise.

Almas: What are some progressions that have been made in The Restoration Toolbox since the publication of the book?

Aishwarya: We are now working on another project, which is looking at retrofit design and how we can repair in a more climate-sensitive way. That's going to come out by the end of this year. For us, it's an ongoing journey. The intention of the work remains the same. It may take different shapes. It could become a book, a symposium, a conference, multiple things, but the focus always remains on making heritage responsive to the climate crisis and economy and relevant to our local communities in a way that upskills them, along with professionals and artisans. The larger goal always will be to create sustainable and livable cities.