Keep History alive by Preserving Our Heritage

Preserving heritage while making it sustainable? Parnavi Bangar , Architect-history, gives us an insight into her approach. Through thoughtful design and innovative strategies, she strives to balance heritage conservation with modern-day needs. Discover the significance of conserving history and designing sustainable buildings for the future.

Could you briefly describe how you came to recreate the lost heritage?

While pursuing architecture, we are taught humanities, which is the history of architecture, but briefly, I was interested in heritage after that. The recreational idea came to me while I was in Hampi. I realized everyone else is unable to imagine the ruins as I am while explaining it to them, so I thought of putting it on paper. That's how I initially started recreating the ruins and started researching how it could be done accurately a while later. Soon after, I published my research paper explaining my methodology for doing so.

What are your professional achievements?

I am an architect with a course in conservation. Through reminiscing history, I have completed 21 monuments in Hampi, 9 in Raigad Fort, one in Kashmir, the Martand Sun Temple, one in Combodia, one in Nepal, 3 for the Isha Foundation in TN, recently Shaniwar in Wada, Pune, and so on. Through this, I have met a lot of people and had the opportunity to collaborate with them.

What would be the cause of the loss of the heritage?

There are a lot of causes. The most important one, I feel, is neglect. If one monument is being watched over properly, no other cause can be responsible for any loss. If that monument is being neglected then it is exposed to destruction, vegetation growth, illegal activities, abundance, etc.|

How can we protect our cultural legacy and its significance?

To avoid further loss of heritage, all we need to do is be aware. Aware of our heritage that is still out there. The conservation of it is the most important part of preserving it for the future. So we should encourage consulting proper people before taking any steps for conservation, as improper conservation is equally harmful.

Today, with modernization, we tend to forget what our culture is, and some people follow it with half knowledge. So the best way to go about it is to study it. We can study our own culture, read about it, ask elders; this might actually bring out hidden stories instead of following it blindly like a trend.