Threads of Chanderi
Threads of Chanderi
An urban rejuvenation proposal for the historic weaving town
An urban rejuvenation proposal for the historic weaving town
Mixed-use · Urban Redevlopment · Culture · Public Spaces · Restoration · Adaptive Re-use · Competition
Program
To design of ‘mix’ buildings or groups of buildings, showing what the proposed mixed would be, why, and how it/they might successfully be achieved. This can include any or all of: urban blocks or quarters with a combination of mutually beneficial uses; proposals for new buildings or typologies which cater for different uses, and units of buildings in which different activities can take place, simultaneously or at different times.
Client
World Architecture Festival, Berlin 2016
Location
Chanderi, India
Project Status
Winner - 1st Place
Architecture/Design
Aayush Jindal
Role
Documentation, Conception and Design
Other Partners
Aditya Singh
Husam Nazer
Abhin Mohan
Tarun Bhasin
Yug Aggarwal
Dr. Sanjeev Singh
Year
2016
Project Overview
This is an urban rejuvenation proposal for the historic weaving town of Chanderi. Developed through independent site visits, contextual studies, and observations of the city’s architectural and cultural fabric, the project reimagines Chanderi’s silk route heritage as a living framework for renewal.
The proposal studies the town as a layered urban landscape shaped by weaving, trade, monuments, domestic life, markets, and everyday public spaces. Rather than treating heritage as a collection of isolated buildings, it approaches Chanderi as an active cultural ecosystem where craft, architecture, economy, and community remain deeply connected.
The intervention proposes a polycultural settlement — a mixed framework where craft production, tourism, community spaces, and daily urban life can overlap. Through this approach, Chanderi’s identity is reactivated as both heritage and future possibility: a city where the threads of craft, memory, and public life continue to shape one another.
Reimagining the City Core
Reimagining the City Core
The proposal reimagines Chanderi’s historic core as a layered public realm, recalling accounts of a city once animated by markets, craft, and movement across multiple street levels.
New connections, stepped paths, terraces, promenades, and maidans reopen the city as a multidimensional public landscape. Existing havelis and built fragments are preserved, restored, and adapted with new cultural and civic functions, allowing the genius loci of Chanderi to remain visible while supporting contemporary use.
The intervention connects the historic core to the new weaving settlement, creating a continuous urban experience where craft, heritage, tourism, and everyday life can overlap across day and night.
The proposal reimagines Chanderi’s historic core as a layered public realm, recalling accounts of a city once animated by markets, craft, and movement across multiple street levels.
New connections, stepped paths, terraces, promenades, and maidans reopen the city as a multidimensional public landscape. Existing havelis and built fragments are preserved, restored, and adapted with new cultural and civic functions, allowing the genius loci of Chanderi to remain visible while supporting contemporary use.
The intervention connects the historic core to the new weaving settlement, creating a continuous urban experience where craft, heritage, tourism, and everyday life can overlap across day and night.
Fieldwork & Urban Traces
Fieldwork & Urban Traces
The photographs record both the physical condition of Chanderi and the conversations that shaped the proposal. Meetings with the city council and the weaving community helped ground the project in the needs of its primary users — craftsmen, residents, and local institutions.
The remaining images capture the city’s fragmented heritage: preserved courtyards, damaged havelis, exposed stone structures, and traces of former grandeur. Together, they reveal Chanderi as a place between memory and renewal, where new dwellings, weaving centres, markets, and visitor infrastructure could support both everyday life and the cultural economy.
The photographs record both the physical condition of Chanderi and the conversations that shaped the proposal. Meetings with the city council and the weaving community helped ground the project in the needs of its primary users — craftsmen, residents, and local institutions.
The remaining images capture the city’s fragmented heritage: preserved courtyards, damaged havelis, exposed stone structures, and traces of former grandeur. Together, they reveal Chanderi as a place between memory and renewal, where new dwellings, weaving centres, markets, and visitor infrastructure could support both everyday life and the cultural economy.
Photographs
A 200-unit residential project exploring communal living through layered courtyards and spatial transitions. The design creates a gradient from public to private, using threshold spaces and material shifts to define territories
Fieldwork & Urban Traces
The photographs record both the physical condition of Chanderi and the conversations that shaped the proposal. Meetings with the city council and the weaving community helped ground the project in the needs of its primary users — craftsmen, residents, and local institutions.
The remaining images capture the city’s fragmented heritage: preserved courtyards, damaged havelis, exposed stone structures, and traces of former grandeur. Together, they reveal Chanderi as a place between memory and renewal, where new dwellings, weaving centres, markets, and visitor infrastructure could support both everyday life and the cultural economy.
Urban Mix
Urban Mix
Urban Mix
The proposal reinterprets Chanderi’s older circular planning logic, where havelis, markets, palaces, streets, and public spaces once worked as an interconnected civic network.
Raja Rani Palace, the surrounding havelis, and the promenade become anchors for reconnecting the historic core. Adaptive reuse, craft infrastructure, maidans, visitor routes, and commercial activity are layered together to restore movement and public life.
The result is an active urban mix — not a preserved monument, but a renewed cultural landscape shaped by heritage, craft, and everyday exchange.
The proposal reinterprets Chanderi’s older circular planning logic, where havelis, markets, palaces, streets, and public spaces once worked as an interconnected civic network.
Raja Rani Palace, the surrounding havelis, and the promenade become anchors for reconnecting the historic core. Adaptive reuse, craft infrastructure, maidans, visitor routes, and commercial activity are layered together to restore movement and public life.
The result is an active urban mix — not a preserved monument, but a renewed cultural landscape shaped by heritage, craft, and everyday exchange.
The proposal reinterprets Chanderi’s older circular planning logic, where havelis, markets, palaces, streets, and public spaces once worked as an interconnected civic network.
Raja Rani Palace, the surrounding havelis, and the promenade become anchors for reconnecting the historic core. Adaptive reuse, craft infrastructure, maidans, visitor routes, and commercial activity are layered together to restore movement and public life.
The result is an active urban mix — not a preserved monument, but a renewed cultural landscape shaped by heritage, craft, and everyday exchange.
Wabi-Sabi
Wabi-Sabi
The major havelis are read as time-worn structures — partly occupied, partly abandoned, and marked by construction, decay, memory, and use from the 16th to 18th centuries.
The proposal introduces glass as a contemporary layer inspired by the philosophy of Wabi-Sabi: accepting imperfection, ageing, and incompleteness as part of the building’s value. During the day, the transparent additions recede, allowing the ruinous stone fabric to remain dominant. At night, they glow from within, turning the havelis into illuminated silhouettes of memory.
This contrast preserves the emotional weight of the ruins while inviting new programmes, residents, visitors, and travellers back into the historic core.
A 200-unit residential project exploring communal living through layered courtyards
and spatial transitions. The design creates a gradient from public to private, using
threshold spaces and material shifts to
define territories
The major havelis are read as time-worn structures — partly occupied, partly abandoned, and marked by construction, decay, memory, and use from the 16th to 18th centuries.
The proposal introduces glass as a contemporary layer inspired by the philosophy of Wabi-Sabi: accepting imperfection, ageing, and incompleteness as part of the building’s value. During the day, the transparent additions recede, allowing the ruinous stone fabric to remain dominant. At night, they glow from within, turning the havelis into illuminated silhouettes of memory.
This contrast preserves the emotional weight of the ruins while inviting new programmes, residents, visitors, and travellers back into the historic core.
Adaptive Reuse Atmosphere
The day and night views show how the restored haveli can operate as both heritage structure and active public space. During the day, the new walkways, staircases, glass insertions, and textile elements bring movement and colour into the historic stone fabric.
At night, the intervention becomes more atmospheric. The intiror light reveals the depth of the ruins, while the contemporary additions frame the old structure without overpowering it. The Built is no longer seen only as a remnant of the past, but as a renewed cultural setting for gathering, craft, and urban memory.
Render
Echoes of Curon exists as a spatial dialogue between the unyielding stone of the 14th-century Romanesque tower and the shifting, fluid surface of Lake Resia. The intervention rejects the traditional monument in favor of an "atmospheric frame"—a 60x 60-meter square volume that seeks to articulate the contradiction between the physical relic and the submerged memory of the lost village.
Terraced Bazaars
Terraced Bazaars
Terraced Bazaars
In the Ain-i-Akbari, Abu’l-Fazl describes Chanderi’s bazaars as rising with the terrain — arranged in two and three levels, connected by broad stone ramps that could carry horses and loaded elephants.
The proposal translates this memory into a contemporary circulation system. Metal ramps and elevated paths cut through the haveli fabric, not as imitation, but as a clear architectural trace of the present.
By reconnecting fragmented levels, the intervention restores movement as an urban experience — allowing visitors to encounter the city through courtyards, terraces, thresholds, and changing views.
In the Ain-i-Akbari, Abu’l-Fazl describes Chanderi’s bazaars as rising with the terrain — arranged in two and three levels, connected by broad stone ramps that could carry horses and loaded elephants.
The proposal translates this memory into a contemporary circulation system. Metal ramps and elevated paths cut through the haveli fabric, not as imitation, but as a clear architectural trace of the present.
By reconnecting fragmented levels, the intervention restores movement as an urban experience — allowing visitors to encounter the city through courtyards, terraces, thresholds, and changing views.
Photo Gallery
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Architecture, design and spatial investigations
across built, unbuilt and collaborative work.
Based in Nuremberg, Germany
Works across Europe, US, India and beyond
CONTACT
2026 Aayush Jindal/ Spatial Sketchbook
Project and media rights remain with their respective authors and rights
holders. Unless otherwise credited, original content independently created
by Aayush Jindal is copyright of Aayush Jindal / Spatial Sketchbook.
Architecture, design and spatial investigations
across built, unbuilt and collaborative work.
Based in Nuremberg, Germany
Works across Europe, US, India and beyond
CONTACT
2026 Aayush Jindal/ Spatial Sketchbook
Project and media rights remain with their respective authors and rights
holders. Unless otherwise credited, original content independently created
by Aayush Jindal is copyright of Aayush Jindal / Spatial Sketchbook.
Architecture, design and spatial investigations
across built, unbuilt and collaborative work.
Based in Nuremberg, Germany
Works across Europe, US, India and beyond
CONTACT
2026 Aayush Jindal/ Spatial Sketchbook
Project and media rights remain with their respective authors and rights
holders. Unless otherwise credited, original content independently created
by Aayush Jindal is copyright of Aayush Jindal / Spatial Sketchbook.
Architecture, design and spatial investigations
across built, unbuilt and collaborative work.
Based in Nuremberg, Germany
Works across Europe, US, India and beyond
CONTACT
2026 Aayush Jindal/ Spatial Sketchbook
Project and media rights remain with their respective authors and rights
holders. Unless otherwise credited, original content independently created
by Aayush Jindal is copyright of Aayush Jindal / Spatial Sketchbook.
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