Ajit-Vivek Museum
A historical old palace sanctified by several visits of Swami Vivekananda, it is an edifice of the friendship between then raja of Khetri Ajit Singh Bahadur and the Swami. The restored palace is now housing a museum on the life and teachings of Swami Vivekananda and his relationship with Raja Ajit Singh. Vivek Darshan is the first exclusive museum based on life and teachings of Swami Vivekananda in Khetri town, Jhunjhunu district, Rajasthan. The museum is set up in 10,000 sq ft of area inside Futehh Billass in Khetri. Last Raja of Khetri, Ajit Singh had donated his palace Futehh Bilass to Ramakrishna Mission to set up a memorial for Swami Vivekananda.
Project
The project began with understanding the history and evolution of signages and symbols. Different practices and pictograms were studied. Case studies were done for cities, institutes, hospitals, etc. Media intervention and new inventions were examined, besides Global Positioning Systems, electronic navigation systems, inertial navigation systems.
Iconography
Iconography
The icon designs for the signage system are based on cultural attire of the people of Rajasthan. The visual treatment is inspired from the Victorian silhouette portraits. Explorations with form refinement and typography went along with user testing, to evolve a suitable pictorial language. Help was taken from NID’s Hindi department for vocabulary. Material exploration was done for creating a prototype with stone, terracotta, wood and brass. Essentials and limitations were understood and simplified. Final layouts of printable signages were explored with color schemes, patterns, positions. Material and method explorations were done with solid surface (for inlay techniques) and Aluco bond (for cast vinyl techniques)
Panel layout
Look and feel of the panels built in wood and brass
