Hemani Singh

Recovering Delhi's Red Fort: Presence of Past in the Present Hemani Singh

Red Fort, Delhi was built in the seventeenth century as the fortress palace of the newly found capital of Shahjahanabad. Built of red sandstone, the fort occupied a huge chunk of land along the river Yamuna. Today, after more than 350 years of turbulent history, the fort stands virtually as an empty shell with a confused mixture of structures within. It stands isolated in terms of its context, Old Delhi (Shahjahanabad) and confused in terms of its usage. The fort is literally a contested landscape in which claims on the same terrain are constantly being renegotiated. Through this book the author tries to demonstrate some of the opportunities that can be uncovered at different scales to begin to articulate the various claims on the fort into a constructive process. The fort is studied historically, contextually and spatially before arriving at a series of proposals that begin to show where a new coherence could be established in terms of attitudes towards the Red Fort and perhaps in terms of contemporary interventions...