To preserve heritage buildings in Chennai, PWD to join with Australian government
Posted on: 24/Jan/2019 10:32:07 AM
In India, after Kolkata, Chennai city has got more than 2000 heritage buildings. Conservation or preservation of these heritage buildings is very important. The news now is the Public Works Department or PWD of Chennai would sign a Memorandum of Understanding or MoU with the government of Australia to share knowledge about conservation of heritage buildings.
It is important to note that the PWD had agreed upon the suggestion made by delegation of Australian heritage experts led by AusHeritage, a network of cultural heritage management organisations established by the Australian government. For a meeting with the Building Centre and Conservation Division or BCCD, PWD, a 7 member delegation visited the PWD complex on Wednesday, 23rd January. The news collected was this 7 member delegation also walked around Chepauk Palace on the sidelines of GIM or Global Investors Meet. Not many present generation youngsters would have known about this Chepauk Palace that was built in the year 1768. The amazing piece of information is this palace was constructed in the Indo-Sarcanic style of architecture.
According to Mr. Vinod Daniel who is the chairman of AusHeritage, his team have collaborated with the TN government for restoration of Kamaraj Memorial House in Madurai. He then spoke about how for the government museum in Chennai his team has been doing its best. He explained about how the meeting would open doors for more such projects in the future and how sharing of expertise on approach to preserve colonial structures would be important. Mr. Vinod Daniel later shed light about their mission to India and said it was for exchange of knowledge between heritage practitioners in different cities.
Holding capacity building workshops on the conservation of heritage and museum collections are important and Mr Vinod and his team have discussed with the minister for official language and Tamil culture, Mr. Pandiarajan about this. Various architectural styles of heritage structures present in the city of Chennai were elaborated by Mr. Satyamurthy, deputy engineer of PWD. As per Mr. Kalyanasundaram, chief engineer of BCCD, it is clear that the popular Kamarajar Salai has got many historical buildings and it is a heritage corridor.
