JP Narayan Museum in Lucknow by Studio Archohm

FACT FILE Project Name: Jayaprakash Narayan Interpretation Center Category: Museum Location: Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh Architecture Firm: Studio Archohm Principal Architect: Sourabh Gupta Area: 3269 sq.mt Completion Year: 2016 DESCRIPTION: The JPN Museum is a gateway framing the centre placed as a wedged-shaped monument with a massive arch carved out of the mass; its nine-metre height and twenty-metre ambitious span are clearly attempts to push the limits of structural design and construction. Its stepped roof terminates in a pavilion that gifts a panoramic view of the R.M. Lohia Park and the Convention Centre. The museum within is an experience in space design with the depiction of Jayaprakash Narayan as a chronological narrative of a linear journey. It is divided into two zones; the zone of absorption and the zone of reflection. As the names suggest, these spaces enable absorption of information triggering curiosity and contemplation which then is expected to lead to reflection and assimilation. Thus the museum is not just a container that preserves frozen albeit inspiring moments of a past but breeds them and ensures that they percolate into current reality, and lay the foundation for the future.Thus while the various exhibits and narratives remain centre stage, the building offers surfaces, volumes and elements as tactile backdrops. The convention centre and the museum inserted as anchor points defining a principal node of the city along with their bold but sculptural forms seem destined to remind people of the immense power they possess; the power to bring about change. Archohm Consults, a multidisciplinary architecture studio, in line with Shri Akhilesh Yadav’s (Ex-Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh) vision, has been responsible for the design of this museum Principal architect Sourabh Gupta narrates the design process on the sketchboard