HUNDREDHANDS BREATHES NEW LIFE INTO A 150-YEAR-OLD ERSTWHILE SCHOOL WITH SABHA, A NEW ART AND CULTURE SPACE IN THE HEART OF BENGALURU.

Buildings that have reverberated with the voices of multiple generations carry a quiet magic—a magic that lingers long after those voices have faded.

- TEXT: VAISHNAVI NAYEL TALAWADEKAR PHOTOS: ARJUN KRISHNA

Architect Bijoy Ramachandran, of multidisciplinary design practice Hundredhands, knows this to be true, as he also knows that it can take time to uncover this magic. “We had to look deep,” he says of Sabha, the studio's maiden conservation and adaptive reuse project. The initiative was helmed by civic evangelist and former honorary director of the Bangalore International Centre, V Ravichandar. “He and his wife, Hema, had started a family trust, and were interested in restoring a colonial-era school in Bengaluru's Cantonment [area] and reimagining it as a hub for artistic expression,” explains Ramachandran, who worked closely with cultural strategist Raghu Tenkayala. “He [Tenkayala] played an instrumental role in bringing together the RBANM's Educational Charities—to which the school once belonged—and Ravi's [Ravichandar's] family trust.”