Interior Design

Prof.Smriti Saraswat is trained as an Architect & Interior-Designer. She has been awarded with a Letter of Merit from the CEPT University, Ahmedabad. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture and Planning at IIT Roorkee (Uttarakhand, India), and a joint faculty member in the Department of Design, IIT Roorkee. She is passionate about Cultural and Architectural Heritage; Traditional Building Practices and Indigenous Communities; Interior-Architecture; Craft and Technology; Material Culture and Design-Build Procedures; Creative and Cultural Industries; Design; Skill Development; Narratives; Anthropological Quests and Ethnographic Approaches in Architecture; Women Empowerment.

She has worked on – prestigious projects focusing on museums and conservation while doing internship with the Development and Research Organisation on Nature, Arts and Heritage (DRONAH), Gurgaon; Projects and events discussing craft & technology, design innovation and interior-architecture during her tenure as a senior researcher at Design Innovation and Craft Resource Centre (DICRC), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, with a focus on conducting workshops, prototyping, developing monographs based on these, and creating material inventories; Projects and events focusing on indigenous communities (especially women artisans), art-craft-interior-architecture traditions of Uttarakhand and visual and cultural narratives from the Himalayan state with IIT Roorkee and Ministry of Culture; and, a joint project on Model Village Development for the Juang Tribe of Odisha, funded by HUDCO. She has taken initiatives to promote the role of craftspersons, especially women artisans, in the non-traditional sectors like education and encouraged their participation in varied courses, workshops, exhibitions and events at IIT Roorkee. Recently, she has got a Research Grant “A New Passage to INDIA”, sponsored by DAAD, Germany, in collaboration with Prof. Axel Sowa, RWTH University, Aachen that focuses on architectural heritage, material culture, building crafts and experimental architecture.

Her Ph.D. (at the final stage of completion) is an attempt to explore frameworks for interventions in Space-Making Crafts (more popularly known as building crafts or architectural crafts) of the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand (India). She has received several grants and scholarships; organized varied national and international workshops; training programmes; short term courses, including GIAN and SWAYAM NPTEL; trans-disciplinary academic workshops at IIT Roorkee that focus on materials; heritage; craft and technology; interior-architecture; and, design innovations.; set up collaborations with National and International schools and organisations; and authored several publications. She loves to travel; document; read; create photo essays; and tell stories.