National Crafts Museum

The National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum

Description

The National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum commonly known as National Crafts Museum in New Delhi is one of the largest crafts museums in India designed by Charles Correa between 1975 and 1990. A result of the nation-building process post-independence - Emergence of India as a ‘crafts nation`, rooting the traditions and cultural heritage of a nation that also had modern aspirations. This was also the result of the leadership of powerful women like Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Pupul Jayakar, who with others helped forge the idea of India as a crafts nation even as they made possible new roles for women within the fields of crafts that were previously male-dominated.

Commissioned, 1975
Completed, 1990

The area was envisaged as an ethnographic space where craftsmen from various parts of India would come to work towards the preservation of various traditional arts and crafts.

Addition, 2014

Invited by the Chairperson of the National Crafts Museum (NCM) in Delhi to transform its dusty and damp premises into a revitalized space, the brief for Studio Lotus required a redesign of the Museum Shop, attached Café, and courtyard sections, all of which were in a state of disrepair.


Factoids
2014- Café Lota is a natural extension of the Museum shop and is set in the negative space created by the boundary wall and the museum shop designed by Studio Lotus, Delhi.

Related Sites
Sabarmati Ashram- The architect, Charles Correa designed the Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad in 1917.