Aranyani Pavilion was a welcome addition to India Art Fair week this year.
Aranyani has launched one of India’s most ambitious architectural and ecological pavilions, which opened at Sunder Nursery in the heart of New Delhi on Wednesday 4 February. The Pavilion project is a landmark conservation and creative arts initiative, dedicated to renewing human connection with the natural world.
Over ten days, this installation hosted a public programme of talks, workshops, and guided tours exploring ecology, culture, craft, and design. Through these events, the Pavilion transformed into a gathering place for conversations about ecology in the midst of a polluted urban metropolis. Speakers included environmental activist and scholar Vandana Shiva and historian Sathnam Sanghera, alongside architects, creatives, and other leaders working at the intersection of culture and sustainability.
As an organisation, Aranyani was founded in 2024 by conservation scientist and creative director Tara Lal. It takes its name from Aranyani, the forest goddess of the Rigveda, one of India’s oldest sacred texts. In Vedic tradition, she embodies humanity’s sacred and ancient relationship with the wilderness. The Pavilion draws directly from this symbolism, positioning itself as a contemporary reflection on ecological reverence. As Lal explains, the Pavilion is an “invitation to experience ecology not as abstraction, but as something we walk through, feel, and belong to,” as part of a system of “Indigenous knowledge”.
Architecturally, the Pavilion is presented as a spiral walk-through installation, drawing from the spatial logic of India’s sacred groves and forest sanctuaries. Guided by principles of sacred geometry and movement, the structure leads visitors along a continuous path of shifting light, shadow, texture and sound. Lal developed the project in collaboration with the architectural studio T_M.space, founded by Tanil Raif and Mario Serrano Puche. Its intricate structure was technically realised by The Works, led by Guillaume Lecacheux, and complemented by sound design from Gaurav Raina and Komorebi. The Pavilion spans 600 square metres in total, with a 100 square metre inner gallery, creating a space that feels both intimate and expansive.
One of the most striking features of the pavilion is its material. The structure is built from upcycled lantana, an invasive shrub introduced to India through Portuguese and British colonial trade in the eighteenth century. Today, lantana covers more than 13 million hectares of land and suffocates native forests and ecosystems. The Pavilion recasts this plant as a structural material, transforming an invasive species into a meaningful architectural element.
Above the woven lantana framework sits a canopy of over 40 native plant species, forming a functioning micro-habitat. Layering the indigenous species over the invasive ones, the Pavilion turns its structure into a living metaphor—showing that ecological renewal begins by recognising India’s colonial past, while restoring what belongs to the land.
Although the Pavilion stood at Sunder Nursery for just ten days, its life will continue beyond the event. The entire structure will be permanently reinstalled at the Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls’ School in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. There, it will function as a living classroom for students, researchers, and emerging conservationists. Meanwhile, the Pavilion’s edible and medicinal plants will be transferred to community-led environmental projects across Delhi, including the Basti Gardens of Hope in Nizamuddin and Swechha’s urban forest restoration projects. Together, these initiatives will extend the Pavilion’s ethos of repair into the landscapes and communities that shaped it.
