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Regain past glory

Nina Varghese

The DBS Office Business Centre in Mumbai has won the Award of Merit in the UNESCO Asia Pacific Heritage Awards for culture heritage conservation competition 2000-2001.

The DBS House is a stand alone heritage building at Fort, Mumbai. The building with 15 executive suites with a Victorian style facade of red and white brick was restored with the colonial influences intact.

Conservation architect Sandhya Sawant, and structural consultant Sudhir Deshpande, worked to preserve the original charm of the building, which dates back to 1895. The restoration work took three years during which they stripped the buildings facade of i ts paint and restructured it internally.

A summary of the awards comments states that the restoration of DBS Houses demonstrates how close collaboration between the corporate property owner and local conservation experts has resulted in adaptive reuse that preserves local heritage while accommo dating the requirement of a state-of-the-art business centre.

DBS House was one of the three buildings to be selected for UNESCOs Asia Pacific Heritage Awards 2000-2001. The second was a temple in a village in Punjab and the third was the Rajabai Tower at the Mumbai Universitys library building at its Fort campus.