Aradhana Apartments Archives

As the tectonics of Indian urbanism shifted through the late 20th century, the 1980s stood as a curious pause, neither fully tethered to Nehruvian idealism nor yet subsumed by liberalized real estate speculations. It was in this interstitial decade that C.P. Kukreja Architects conceived Aradhana Apartments in R.K. Puram, commissioned by the Burmah Shell Co-operative Housing Society. The project anchors a quiet but potent moment in Indian housing, when the architecture of domesticity still held societal imagination.

Aradhana is no mere artifact of nostalgia. It is composed, contextual, and deliberate in resisting the iconographic in favour of the enduring. The archive, rich with hand-drawn plans, construction photographs, and project records, reveals a housing typology shaped by light, air, and the ethics of material restraint.