AHEC and THINK! Design present REIMAGINE, AHEC’s biggest and most ambitious design collaboration in India to date. The project challenged five of India’s leading architects to recreate that quintessentially Indian piece of furniture: the swing seat (jhoola). The architects involved are Annkur Khosla, Naresh V Narasimhan, Prem Nath, Sanjay Puri and Sonali & Manit Rastogi.

Jhoolas, which were a common sight in most Indian households, seem to have fallen out of favour in recent times. Nonetheless, they continue to have an allure on account of the memories they carry. For REIMAGINE, the architects are being asked to draw on their childhood memories of playfulness, their teenage years of angst and to temper these with ‘grown-up’ elegance in a furniture piece for a contemporary context; a limited edition, legacy piece made out of American hardwoods.

AHEC asked each architect to select from three species (a single species or a combination), which include American cherry, maple and red oak. Together, these three species account for more than 25 percent of the eastern hardwood forests of the USA, one of the largest and most sustainable hardwood resources in the world. All five of the pieces have been manufactured by Bram Woodcrafting Studio (BWS) in Mysore.