About Auroville Archives

Auroville Archives began with one Aurovilian, Maj. Gen. Krishna Tewari (Retd.), setting the intention to collect and preserve for posterity the documents created in and about Auroville.

In 1991 a space in the basement of Bharat Nivas began to house this growing collection. A team was formed to conduct the work of collecting and organizing the materials and assisting community members who wished to learn about the history of Auroville.

Beginning with collections of paper documents, photos, slides and cassettes, the Archives over the years saw the emergence of new technologies – computers and software, digital photography, CDs and CDRs, digital videography, internet – and along with these the tools and methods of converting the physical and analog content into digital. Efforts to catalog the collection also evolved with the changing technology.

Construction of a specially-designed building for the Archives started in 2015, finished in part in 2017 and now houses the Archives collections, research library, office and (to open in the near future) reading room for researchers. As is the case for all archives, the Auroville Archives is not a lending library: books and documents can be consulted on the spot or may be scanned and shared.

Today the Archives collections include paper documents and their digital counterparts, photographs and slides and their digital counterparts, videos from the past converted into digital formats, digital-native materials (PDF documents, recent photos, recent videos), books, maps, magazines and artifacts.

The Archives collections are constantly growing as we move forward in time, as Auroville continues to unfold, develop, breathe and question, in the inevitable (if gradual) strengthening of its identity.

Team and office

Archives team: Gilles Guigan, D. Thambidurai, Doris Van Kalker, Meera Elumalai, Kristen Gravelle, Isabelle Mollet

Associates: Pranav Kumar (website), Marco Saroldi (photographer)

The Archives building is located in the Administrative Area of Auroville, next to SAIIER, near Town Hall.

Our office hours are 8:30-12:30 and 2:00-4:30, Monday to Friday, plus Saturday mornings 8:30-12:30. Please email us for an appointment. We also answer queries directly by email.

avarchives@auroville.org.in

Contributing materials to the Archives

We welcome receiving documents, photos, ephemera, artifacts – any materials that may add richness to our collections.

We are also interested in hearing your stories about life in Auroville – your personal experiences of events, and what has been important to you in your life here. We can either receive these in a finished form (writing, video, audio), or together we can produce something by recording your reflections and memories.