How much of the Taj and its history is in the Mughal museum? Architects Sourabh Gupta and Alexander Schwarz, who designed it, answer
The Mughal Museum in Agra is being built by Noida-based architect Sourabh Gupta, Managing Director, Studio Archohm, and Berlin-based Alexander Schwarz, Design Director, David Chipperfield Architects. The two architects have given form and function to museums before — Gupta’s recent project is the Museum of Socialism-Jayaprakash Narayan Interpretation Centre, Lucknow, while Schwarz won the Mies van der Rohe 2011 Award for the Neues Museum in Berlin. The Mughal Museum, located towards the East Gate of the Taj Mahal Complex, is set to open next year. In an interview, the duo share their plans for the museum, the importance of history in laying context for architecture, and the different synergies of Mughal architecture that enables contemporariness:
What is the purpose of the Mughal Museum in Agra?
Sourabh Gupta (SG): It’s a museum of art and architecture of the Mughals. The intent is that people who visit the Taj Mahal also learn of Fatehpur Sikri, the Red Fort and Humayun’s Tomb, and see how different they are from one another. For instance, the Taj Mahal was meant to be seen from Mehtab Bagh, the old garden complex, rather than from where we see it today. At the Museum, we are building up on the storytelling rather than placing pieces of exhibits.
What was your research approach for this project and your inferences?
Alexander Schwartz (AS): We visited a lot of places in an intense 10-day sequence more than two years ago, creating a cultural map of Mughal architecture. Our approach is not that of an art historian. Architects look at things and try to develop an idea of what we see. One doesn’t have the stress of historic truth. The question we asked ourselves was: how much should the architecture for a museum on Mughal architecture reflect Mughal architecture? I think it should definitely not be visually Mughal.
AS: I found it interesting to see how modern and rational Mughal architecture is. It produces these paradise settings. I think the relationship between the rational and the abstract aspects of the plan, and the pleasure of the surface, these synergies are compelling. We have abstracted some of these principles into the museum, and have tried to translate these ideas into the architecture. According to me, Mughal architecture is international. For instance, look at the plan of Taj Mahal and St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Imperial architecture has always been about knowing what other emperors do. It collects universal knowledge of its time. At the Taj, it was both exotic and being at home, all at once.
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