The ArSHEtect Perspective: Featuring Monica Khosla Bhargava

Twenty-seven years ago, I started my architecture practice from a tiny nook in my parent’s verandah with a belief, that design has the power to appropriate human emotions and connect people to their physical environment. My postgraduate thesis at SPA Delhi on this subject had already been awarded. And I have had the fortune of being taught sustainability at Lund University, Sweden by George McRobie, E.F. Schumacher’s partner at Intermediate Technology Group. These concepts found resonance and a few projects like SVS Vidyalaya and Institute of Advance Management fell into my lap. I was living my dream!

It was then that my daughter, just two, was diagnosed with Nephrotic Syndrome. The biopsy revealed possibilities of her condition being reversible. For the next decade, we made sure that besides the life-saving drugs she was administered, she felt empowered to live life fully and is today cured, and a successful scholar at Leeds. I too shifted my studio to the house and worked between hospital shifts. The belief that my clients held in me during this phase, is actually, what helped me keep my practice alive and grow.

Today, being the first woman Architect from eastern India to be selected for the Asian Paints Masters Gallery tells us that the glass ceiling has finally been broken! Also, besides numerous awards and media features, being part of the Ministerial Conference at the 3rd World Water Forum in Japan, 2003 (which prepared the Kyoto declaration on water), Official Architect for the World Flower Show, WAFA 2020 and shifting my office two years ago to a tiny three-storeyed studio, have been some of the milestones of my professional life.

I cannot forget to mention here, my most challenging project- St. Peter’s Church at Oxford Mission, Kolkata. The learning from designing Mother Teresa’s Shrine (unbuilt) at St. Thomas’s Church had prepared me greatly in understanding that a Church is not an architectural style; it is the collective faith and self-expression of its congregation. With truth and simplicity in material and design, we achieved completion of the project at approximately Forty Lakhs Rupees, the lowest amongst the cost of new Church projects by the CNI in India.