Jainism is one of the world’s oldest living religions, with a philosophical tradition of extraordinary depth and sophistication. Its core principles — Ahimsa (non-violence), Satya (truth), Aparigraha (non-possessiveness) — are not merely ethical guidelines but a comprehensive worldview that addresses the relationship between human beings, living creatures, and the natural world with a rigour that is startlingly contemporary in its ecological implications. The challenge of making these principles accessible to a broad public — of translating three thousand years of philosophical thought into a museum experience that moves visitors without reducing the philosophy to a caricature — is one of the most demanding in exhibition design.

SRMD Trust approached Bricolage Bombay with this challenge. The brief was to design an experience center in Dharampur, Gujarat, that would help visitors understand the central message of an upcoming exposition — an event of significant religious and cultural importance to the Jain community. The experience center would occupy a permanent gallery within the existing SRMD space, serving both the lead-up to the exposition and the ongoing educational mission of the Trust.

Bricolage Bombay’s process began, as it always does with museum and experience design, with the content. The Trust’s members and scholars provided extensive documentation of the philosophical concepts to be communicated; the studio’s team worked through this material with the rigour of designers and the curiosity of students, distilling complex ideas into exhibit descriptions, spatial propositions, and visual strategies. This phase — the translation of theological knowledge into spatial narrative — is the most intellectually demanding aspect of museum design, and it is where Bricolage Bombay’s interdisciplinary background in architecture, game design, and digital media is most valuable.

The exhibit design for SRMD uses a layered approach: each gallery begins with an accessible, sensory entry point — a material, a sound, a visual — that establishes an emotional register before the intellectual content is introduced. Jain aesthetics, which favour austerity, precision, and the quality of stillness, informed the material palette: pale stone, clean timber, controlled lighting that emphasises the shape of objects and the texture of surfaces without dramatic effect. Graphics were developed to bridge the visual vocabulary of traditional Jain manuscript illustration and contemporary information design — honouring the tradition while making it legible to a contemporary visitor.

The SRMD experience center was very well received by the Trust, its members, and the broader Jain community of Gujarat and Maharashtra. It represents Bricolage Bombay’s practice at the intersection of museum design and religious cultural heritage — a space where architecture serves not the architect’s ego but the community’s deepest values.