Museum Design · 2026

GHATSHILLAMUSEUM

Role

Exhibition and spatial design

Duration

12 weeks

Focus

Place, memory and local stories

Wide exterior view of the proposed Ghatshilla Museum in its landscape

Designing the future of the museum.

This project began with a brief to design a museum about the future, or to explore the future of the museum. I chose the latter: to investigate how the museum as an institution might be reimagined.

My research examined the role museums play in collecting, representing and producing knowledge, with a particular focus on decolonization. I explored how museums could move beyond conventional institutional models and develop more meaningful relationships with communities, cultures and the places they represent.

I chose the region of Ghatshila as the context for this investigation. The project asks how a museum rooted in its landscape and local communities might operate, whose stories it should hold, and how those stories could be collected, interpreted and shared.

Project timeline

Six weeks from research to space.

The project moved from questioning the museum as an institution to building a situated architectural and exhibition proposal for Ghatshila.

Week 01
Museum narratives
Understanding museum storytelling through readings, precedent studies, discussions and field visits.
Week 02
Trends and research
Exploring emerging exhibition practices, decolonial approaches and frameworks for cultural ecology.
Week 03
Context and brief
Reading Ghatshila through its landscapes, communities and institutions, then defining the final project brief.
Week 04
Narrative development
Organising field material, mapping sources and relationships, and building the museum's narrative framework.
Week 05
Spatial storytelling
Translating the narrative into programme, layouts, sections, visitor movement and a distributed museum circuit.
Week 06
Concept resolution
Resolving the spatial concept, material atmosphere, visual language and final exhibition experience.

Final concept

View across the museum courtyard from the shaded veranda

Research foundation

Observations and conceptual frameworks.

Observations

People and nature are separated.
Most existing museums do not fully acknowledge the relationship between people and nature. As a result, nature is often left out of the stories they tell.
Indigenous people are isolated from the present.
Many tribal museums present Indigenous people inside an isolated container. Their contemporary realities and existing problems are rarely acknowledged.
Colonial systems remain embedded.
Museums have not fully escaped the scientific and colonial histories that shaped how cultures, communities and objects are collected, classified and displayed.

Conceptual frameworks

Three lenses shaping the proposal

Cultural Ecology

Cultural ecology is the study of how people adapt to their social and physical environments.

Toxic Tourism

Based on Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice by Phaedra C. Pezzullo.

Eco-museum

The ecomuseum model developed by Georges Henri Rivière focuses on the identity of a place, local participation, and improving the welfare and development of local communities.

Field research · Ghatshila

Walking, observing, recording.

A visual record of the landscape, material culture and everyday spaces that shaped the project.

Two people photographed outdoors during field research in Ghatshila — Recording the site
The field visit documented how landscape, settlement and everyday life overlap. These photographs became working notes for carrying material, spatial and social details into the museum proposal.

Outdoor structures at the edge of the hills

Working with material on the forest floor

Project context

Locating the museum in Ghatshila.

State context

Jharkhand

Drag to explore

Museum system

A museum distributed across the landscape.

Instead of containing the region inside one building, the museum connects existing places through a shared circuit. A tour van carries visitors between the station, communities, landscape and industrial sites.

Ghatshila context study mapping Jaduguda Uranium Mine, HCL Smelter, Burudi Dam, Netra Bera, Chukari Para and Ghatshila Station

Museum circuit connecting Ghatshila Station, Burudi Dam, Chukari Para, Netra Bera and Jaduguda

Tour van concept showing the route guide, vehicle capacity and mobile museum transport

Museum tickets

Three-day guided experience

Scroll to turn the ticket

Museum three-day pass with floral photograph and Indigenous Storytelling identity

Museum ticket with admission details, terms and detachable barcode stub

Reading the ground before the building.

Aerial view of Netra Bera, with a clearing and settlement surrounded by forest

From research to space

The relationships found through fieldwork become a spatial system of thresholds, pauses and shared rooms. The architecture supports changing exhibitions while keeping the landscape and community at the centre of the experience.

Interior program axonometric showing the museum sequence from reception through the herbarium, soundscape and memory library — 01Interior program and visitor sequence

Axonometric study showing the museum building, approach and surrounding structures — 02Building and approach

Site plan showing visitor movement, open areas and routes around the museum — 03Site circulation

Architectural linework axonometric showing the museum rooms, courtyard and outdoor gathering elements — 04Museum structure and open courtyard

Visitor sequence

From arrival to gathering

Scroll through the spaces to follow the journey.

01—05

01Reception
02Herbarium
03Soundscape
04Memory library
05Open courtyard

01 / 05

Reception

Arrival and orientation

Visitors arrive, receive an introduction to the museum, and learn how its rooms connect to the wider landscape. This first pause sets up the journey ahead.

Architectural program diagram, enlarged around the reception — Detail from interior program diagram · Reception

Warm reception area with botanical displays, books and seating — Reception visualization

02 / 05

Herbarium

Plants and living knowledge

Plant displays bring the living landscape into the museum. Visitors can connect specimens and local knowledge with the forests and gardens they have seen outside.

Architectural program diagram, enlarged around the herbarium — Detail from interior program diagram · Herbarium

Sunlit herbarium with plants, timber displays and circular tables — Herbarium visualization

03 / 05

Soundscape

Listening to place and memory

The journey shifts from looking to listening. Sounds of the landscape and remembered voices invite visitors to consider how a place is experienced and described.

Architectural program diagram, enlarged around the soundscape — Detail from interior program diagram · Soundscape

Tree canopy documented during field research in the Ghatshila landscape — Field research photograph

04 / 05

Memory library

Stories and collective records

Shelves and records make room for stories to be revisited and added to over time. Visitors follow connections between people, objects and memories rather than one fixed account.

Architectural program diagram, enlarged around the memory library — Detail from interior program diagram · Memory library

Sunlit terraced interior for shared learning and collective memory — Memory library visualization

05 / 05

Open courtyard

Gathering and exchange

The sequence opens into a shared outdoor room. Visitors can pause, talk and gather, carrying what they have seen and heard into an exchange with others.

Architectural program diagram, enlarged around the open courtyard — Detail from interior program diagram · Open courtyard

Open museum courtyard seen from a shaded veranda — Courtyard visualization

Final proposal

The final proposal creates a flexible museum framework that can grow with its community. Exhibits can change over time while the spatial journey continues to connect personal memories with a shared sense of place.

Site reading