Walking Through Deep Time at Bagh: Dinosaur Fossil National Park

ARCH-EN DESIGN recently prepared a design proposal for the Dinosaur Fossil National Park at Bagh, in Dhar District, Madhya Pradesh. The park covers nearly 89 hectares and holds dinosaur eggs, bones and fossilised wood from the Mesozoic era. Our proposal treated it as a place for palaeontology, conservation, learning and eco-tourism, while protecting a fragile fossil landscape.

A journey through geological time

The design is built around a visitor's journey through time. It begins at an entrance complex. From there, interpretive paths lead across the fossil zones, through 'time-travel tunnels', into interactive learning galleries and past carefully protected fossil displays. The landscape itself becomes an open-air Museum, where visitors, researchers and students can follow the story of the Earth's prehistoric past.

Treading lightly

Conservation shaped the whole proposal. It called for eco-sensitive construction, controlled visitor movement, protective structures over the fossils and renewable energy, so that the site could welcome visitors with as little impact on the ground as possible.

For us, the project was a chance to explore how Architecture and landscape can reveal the deep history held in the land, and let people walk across it with care.