Port Heritage Museum
A museum that archives the built history of India's oldest colonial Port, and the migration story of indentured labourers to plantation colonies.
Kolkata’s waterfront is characterised by unused industrial infrastructure - from defunct jute mills belonging to private businesses to warehouses and water infrastructure belonging to the Port. Several of these structures have a colonial origin. There have been several initiatives to reuse and repurpose them. The current project rebuilds the structure of three industrial sheds in a dry dock. is a thoughtful initiative to create a museum by repurposing existing industrial infrastructure while making sensitive additions. The project is an industrial heritage adaptive reuse and surgical insertion of new structures. The site along the Hooghly waterfront in Kolkata is a dry dock with a deep history of indenture labour migration. The site with its riparian history holds significance not only for Kolkata Port operations but also in the history of the city, its evolution, and its future direction.
The architecture of the museum is an ensemble of three industrial pitched roof volumes of different scales. The site for the museum is a dry dock with existing industrial structures. The largest building being retrofitted is an industrial shed that served as the covered upway for the dry dock. The overall structural exoskeleton will be preserved including the steel columns and steel truss. The existing retrofitted structure will be taking its self-weight load and the exterior façade. The new floor being inserted, supported by a hollow steel framing system, will seal against the existing shed but will be structurally autonomous. All dead load and live load from the galleries will be taken by the new structure. The second existing structure will be rebuilt in its current location due to major erosion and damage in the structural system. The third structure is being rebuilt at the location of an older structure that used to exist, whose structural column footings are visible.
Project Facts
Location :
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Status :
Cultural
Client :
Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Port Trust
Typology :
Museum, Cultural
Size :
Site Area : 1234
Build-up Area : 1234
Height :
Design Period
2024-2026
Construction Period
Ongoing
Project Team :
Aurgho Jyoti, Subhradip Roy, Akash Ganguly, Vinay KP, Bishshayon Sen, Hareesh G, Farukh Khan
Collaborators :
DRONAH, S.P.A Consultant, Engineering Consultant Services, AMEC, DSR Engineering Services
Awards :
AIA New York New Practice 2025
Center for Architecture New York 2025 Exhibition
Exhibition
Center for Architecture New York 2025 Exhibition
Port Heritage Museum
Indenture Labourer Narrative
The Indenture Labour system was a network of indentured servitude, by which more than 1.6 million workers from British India were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labour, following the abolition of the slave trade in 1830’s. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the development of a large South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, Natal (South Africa), East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Mauritian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.
Indentured servitude is a form of labour in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, or it may be imposed "involuntarily" as a judicial punishment. Later it was also used as a way for a person to pay the cost of transportation to colonies in the Americas. Like any loan, an indenture could be sold; most employers had to depend on middlemen to recruit and transport the workers, so indentures (indentured workers) were commonly bought and sold when they arrived at their destinations. Like prices of slaves, their price went up or down depending on supply and demand. When the indenture (loan) was paid off, the worker was free. Sometimes they might be given a plot of land.
Structural Rehabilitation
The existing steel structures are in highly distressed condition but can be repaired using surgical structural retrofitting. Visual survey of the existing structures provided a preliminary analysis of the damage. This would be followed by NDT / Non-Destructive testing that would test the actual material damage of the structure, followed by detailed distress mapping. This will be critical in the process of rehabilitation. Additional steel plate and hollow steel framing to be used to strengthen the existing structures. Zinc based epoxy primer to be applied on all structures both before and after the structural strengthening process. This will resist corrosion in both existing members and additional retrofitting members. The area around the base of the columns will be cleared to check the foundation condition of the columns. The lateral bracing system in the existing structure to be replaced by new structural bracing or latent ties. The roof sheets will be completely replaced with a sandwich metal panel with insulation.