Sunita Kohli: Pioneering Indian Interior Designer & architectural restorer
Ms Sunita Kohli is an Indian interior designer, architectural restorer & furniture manufacturer. She is a globally recognised, national award winning architectural restorer of some of the most prominent heritage buildings, forts and palaces in India, Pakistan, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
They are vital links to the history & culture of South Asia. Even she had restored Rashtrapati Bhavan (the Presidentโs House), Parliament House Colonnade, the Prime Ministerโs Office and Hyderabad House in New Delhi.
For her singularly unique vision and work she has been lauded by national and international political leaders, including the Prime Minister and President of India. Ms Kohli has helped preserve these national treasures that had significantly decayed and were on the brink of loss.
Ms Kohli was conferred one of the highest national awards, the โPadma Shriโ by the President of India for contribution to excellence in national life in the field of โArchitectural Restoration and Designโ in 1992.
Even she helped restore the famous architects, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Sir Herbert Baker and Sir Robert Tor Russellโs foremost architectural legacies from the British Raj in the capital city of Delhi.
In January 2014, she was appointed as the Chairperson of the School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal. That is one of the leading national universities in India.
She was there to help define and implement a new vision for the field of architecture in the country. She was awarded the prestigious Mahila Shiromani Award, in the field of civil society, by Mother Teresa.
Early life and Education
Ms Kohli was born in Lakshmi Mansions, a noted Victorian building in Lahore on 28th December 1946. She was born to Indar Prakash and Chand Sur. Sunita Kohli grew up in a liberal household in Lucknow as her father was an Arya Samaji. He migrated to Lucknow after the partition. She studied at a Roman Catholic convent in Lucknow.
Her father used to took her to auctions and sales, looking for old lamps and furniture. Later she graduated in English Literature from Lady Shri Ram College (Delhi University) in New Delhi, followed by an M.A. in English from Lucknow University.
Personal life:
In 1971, Sunita Kohli married Ramesh Kohli. He was an equity investor and alumni of the Doon School in Dehradun, St. Stephens College and Delhi Universityโs faculty of law. The couple have three children- Kokila, Suryaveer and Kohelika. They have three grandchildren Anadya, Zohravar and Aaryaman.
Career
She taught at Loreto Convent Lucknow, before the โaccidentalโ start of her career in interior design. After her marriage, she and her husband started frequenting kabadi shops in their free time. They were looking for 19th century English furniture and lamps in Lucknow, Rajasthan and the hill resorts of Dehradun and Mussoorie.
Soon she converted her interest into an antiquarian business through which she sold Davenport desks and Regency wine tables. She learnt restoration of furniture from local master-craftsmen, which led to the start of her restoration business. She is a highly regarded civil society leader in India.
In 1971, she established Sunita Kohli Interior Designs, an interior design firm in New Delhi. In the following year she established Sunita Kohli & Company. The company manufactures contemporary classic furniture and fine reproductions of Art Deco, Biedermeier and Anglo-Indian colonial furniture.
Most recently, her company K2india launched a fine collection of Mid-Century Furniture. Her architect daughter Kohelika is the CEO of the company. ย In the mid-1970s she established in partnership, another design firm which was commissioned to design a small hotel for the Oberoi Group, near the Khajuraho temples, The Oberoi in Bhubaneshwar and the Hotel Babylon in Baghdad.
Over the years she has designed several hotels, resorts and private residences in India and Sri Lanka.
In Lahore, Pakistan, she has also worked on the restoration and conversion into a boutique hotel, of a late Sikh-period haveli in the Old City in Lahor Pakistan.
In the early 1990s, she did the interior design of the British Council Building in New Delhi. She also designed the National Assembly Building in Thimpu, Bhutan.
She has also been involved in the restoration and redecoration of numerous British Raj period buildings in New Delhi, mainly designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, Sir Robert Tor Russell and Sir Herbert Baker. Some of them are Rashtrapati Bhawan (formerly Viceroyโs House), the Prime Ministerโs Office, Parliament House and Hyderabad House.
Sunita Kohli has been the chairperson and founder trustee of an NGO, Umang, that worked for street and slum children. She is also a founding director of โSatyagyan Foundationโ in Varanasi. Satyagyan is an organisation that works with childrenโs education, womenโs literacy, womenโs advocacy and womenโs empowerment through vocational training.
She is also the chairperson of the board of governors of โSave-a-Motherโ, an NGO. She is a patron of the Womenโs Cancer Initiative in Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai. In 2010, she again got involved in the conservation work of Rashtrapati Bhavan, after a gap of 19 years.
In 2005, she founded the one-of-a-kind Museum of Women in the Arts in India (in conjunction with the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, on whose international advisory board she sits). She has been on the National Advisory Board of the โNational Museum of Women in the Artsโ, Washington DC.
Ms Sunita Kohli has been a guest lecturer at Harvard Universityโs Kennedy School of Government Innovations, Emory Universityโs Carlos Museum and Halle Institute, at Colorado College and at the National Building Museum in Washington DC. She was the first Indian architect invited to give a seminal lecture on India at the National Building Museum in Washington DC.
Her essay on โThe Planning of New Delhiโ is part of โThe Millennium Book on New Delhiโ, published by Oxford University Press. Her forthcoming books will be โA Childrenโs Book on Delhiโs Architectureโ, โAwadhi Cuisineโ and โTanjore Paintingsโ.
The first of these books has been illustrated by their three grandchildren โ Anadya, Zohravar and Aaryaman.
In October 2013, she was invited to give the inaugural lectures of the Arts and Culture Programme of the Asia Scotland Institute, at the University of Edinburgh and at the Glasgow School of Art.
In 2014, she was nominated as the chairperson of the board of governors of the School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal by the MHRD, Government of India, for a period of five years. In 2019, she joined the board of advisors at Rishihood University.
She has regularly presented papers in leading museums and universities across the world on โSir Edwin Lutyens and the Planning of New Delhi. They are on Design, Architecture and Historical Conservation; on Literature; on โTraditional Mughal Jewellery as a Statement of Empireโ; on โSocial Entrepreneurshipโ; and on โWorld Heritage Cultural Sites in India and the Subcontinentโ.
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