A public charitable trust based in Coimbatore. We survey historic buildings, document them by hand and instrument, and safeguard the record - the drawings, the photographs, the materials, and the knowledge of the people who made them.
When an old house is pulled down, the knowledge goes with it. How the courtyard was proportioned to manage light and heat. What the lime plaster was made from. Why the doors were carved the way they were, and by whom. The plan that made a family's life work in forty square metres of shade and air.
A building can be measured, drawn, and understood. And if it is gone, the record is what remains.
Browse the record →Plans, sections and elevations drawn to scale from field measurements.
Systematic photographic documentation calibrated for information.
Recorded in the first language of the speaker, with an English summary.
Settlement maps, construction observations and material records.
We visit buildings, measure them comprehensively, and produce a complete set of drawings, photographs, field notes and - where possible - oral histories.
Learn more →Every survey is catalogued with an accession number, indexed by location, building type and period, and held in safekeeping for the long term.
See the record →Studies of building types, construction systems, material traditions and settlement patterns arising from our survey work.
Read our research →Guided walks through the places we work and hands-on workshops in architectural documentation skills. No background needed.
Upcoming walks →Small grants and fellowships to support heritage documentation work across India. Priority given to under-documented regions and early-career researchers.
Learn more →Heritage documentation brought into the classroom. Students learn to look at and draw buildings in their own neighbourhoods.
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A street of Chettinad mansions in Athangudi, each running deep from a narrow frontage through two or three successive courtyards. The survey team measured and photographed fourteen houses in eleven days of continuous fieldwork.
Karaikudi. A lime plaster wall in a merchant's house, mixed with jaggery and egg white, still sound after a century of monsoons.
Pollachi. Three generations of doors - the carving patterns, the wood selection, the proportions passed from father to son. Recorded in Tamil.
Chettinad mansions in Karaikudi and Athangudi. Stone temples in Thanjavur. Weavers' streets in Kanchipuram where the plan of the neighbourhood was shaped by the rhythm of the loom. The primary focus of our early surveys.
The laterite and timber traditions of the Syrian Christian house. The Kerala temple complex. Distinctive domestic architecture shaped by the monsoon and by the practices of the region's many communities.
The Hampi region. The planter landscapes of Madikeri. Coastal traditions of the Dakshina Kannada district. A breadth of building types from stone temple to timber house.
Heritage Architecture Foundation is a permanent public charitable trust. We survey buildings at risk, document them to professional standard, and safeguard the record for the long term. Your support makes fieldwork, publications and grants possible.