Events

Futures of Historic Cities: An Introspective Reading

Speaker: 
Jigna Desai, Professor, Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University, Ahmedabad

Tuesday, 27th January 2026, 3:45 PM IST onwards.

This event will be held in a hybrid mode at the CPR Conference Room and online via Zoom. Please register to attend.

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About the talk
Future plans for historic cities, or city centers, in our part of the world oscillate between two extreme imaginations. One, as an echo of modern life—with imposed modern infrastructure designed to fulfill the needs of a modern resident and a modern traveler. And another, in a seemingly authentic image of the past that it is expected to represent. These cities and city centers are fragile, albeit resilient, urban systems that have embedded wisdom of survival as sites of co-production and layered inhabitation. The talk, through case studies of projects located within historic cities, discusses the challenges of operating within the conundrum of development vs. preservation and examines the possibilities of their sustainable futures. The case studies will be based on primary engagements of the speaker in her capacity as a researcher, educator, and expert advisor.

About the speaker
Jigna Desai is a Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University, Ahmedabad. Jigna is an architect who works with questions of transformation, preservation, and conservation of historic built environments and heritage places. She has, for over a decade, worked towards consolidating conservation education at the faculty. The Masters Program in Conservation and Regeneration, which was introduced by her in 2018, is widely recognized and was presented as a ‘commended case’ of global innovation in World Heritage Education.  Jigna’s other affiliations include heritage monitoring missions, evaluations, and advice for the International Council for Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), World Heritage Committee, and World Monuments. She is currently a Visiting Professor at Nottingham Trent University, UK. She has been the Getty Guest Scholar for the year 2024-25 for her distinctive work on ‘Unintentional Monuments: Addressing Challenges of Conserving Modern Heritage of South Asia.

She has written extensively on architecture, heritage conservation and world heritage issues in India, and her most notable book is Equity in Heritage Conservation, The Case of Ahmedabad (Routledge, Oxon and New York, 2019).