On view at Delhi’s Sunder Nursery from February 4-13, the Aranyani Pavilion by conservationist Tara Lal transforms the invasive lantana camara into a living architectural statement about ecological repair and decolonial futures. Inspired by sacred groves, it invites visitors to slow down, reflect, and reconnect with nature.
If you visit the historic Sunder Nursery gardens in Delhi this week, you’ll see a large-scale ecological art and architecture installation unlike any other at the center of its extensive grounds. Conceptualised by creative director and conservationist Tara Lal, the Aranyani Pavilion marks the first physical expression of Aranyani — a conservation and creative arts initiative dedicated to renewing human connection with the natural world.
Named after Aranyani, the forest goddess of the Rigveda, the pavilion’s inaugural edition, ‘Sacred Nature’, is conceptualised by Lal and designed in collaboration with T___M.space, an architectural design practice led by Tanil Raif and Mario Serrano Puche. Lal comes from the family behind design houses Good Earth and Nicobar and extends that lineage into a very different register here — one where material culture meets ecological restoration. Her practice spans rewilding projects in Maharashtra, wetland restoration in Rajasthan, and conservation work in South Africa. The pavilion marks her most public-facing effort so far. Set at the threshold between Delhi’s urban density and the biodiverse pockets of Sunder Nursery, the installation invites visitors to pause between worlds: the built and the wild, the colonial and the decolonial, and the sacred and the secular.
We all have nature within us. Even in a city, we can find nature if we slow down. We wanted to create a space where you can slow down and reflect.Tara Lal
Materially, the pavilion reflects its decolonial conservation politics. A bamboo frame is intertwined with Lantana camara, a woody shrub introduced by British and Portuguese settlers in the 19th century to “beautify” their colonial gardens. It is now one of India’s most damaging invasive species, spreading across millions of hectares of forest, displacing native plants, and changing soil chemistry. Lantana’s spread serves as a botanical record of colonial aesthetics: a single ornamental choice that has evolved into an ecological crisis over centuries.
“The history of invasive species is always the history of people taking these plants where they don’t belong,” Lal says. “So the question is: What do we do with lantana once we remove it? That question is both economic and philosophical.”
The pavilion highlights a growing movement in India that treats invasive biomass as material rather than waste. Designers and artisans in the south have already begun turning lantana into furniture and artisanal objects, Lal says; with ‘Sacred Nature’, she is extending this logic into architecture. By weaving lantana into a public structure, she is reframing the plant as a tactile reminder of how imported species have transformed India’s ecosystems and as a potential example of mindful reuse that supports local economies while advancing ecological restoration.
“We must also think about what belongs to our land and what doesn’t,” Lal says. “That’s why not only do we have lantana, but we also have native species growing on top, which is very important, because it’s important to recognise what grows on the land as well. And what actually belongs to it.”
At once ecological, architectural, and spiritual, the installation encourages a more ancient mode of relating to nature. “Before nation states, ideologies, or race, we worshipped nature because we understood our survival depended on it,” Lal says.
Colonial land practices disrupted such indigenous modes of ecological worship and broke our traditional knowledge systems, Lal points out. Under colonial rule, British land classifications reshaped the subcontinent’s ecologies, often designating biodiverse commons and scrub forests as “wastelands”. Lal argues that these bureaucratic categories not only disrupted indigenous ecosystems but also fractured long-standing stewardship traditions. Communities that had cared for these landscapes for generations were displaced, disenfranchised, or stripped of custodial rights. For Lal, restoration begins with acknowledging this rupture: “You can’t go back to the past, but you can learn from it to inform the future”. Rebuilding ecological balance, she suggests, requires reviving traditional knowledge systems and working with the people who remain the land’s true stewards.
The pavilion draws from their ancient ways of relating to the world. Its spiritual inflection comes from elemental reverence found in indigenous animist belief systems. Before borders, ideologies, or sectarian divides, Lal says, human communities honoured nature because survival depended on it. “Whatever you worship is what grows,” she notes, gesturing toward this pre-modern consciousness rooted in reciprocity with nature. In a modern, largely secular urban context, this becomes a form of restoration.
Though the pavilion’s presence in Sunder Nursery is temporary, its afterlife is already planned. After the public exhibition in Delhi, the pavilion will be rebuilt near Jaisalmer at the Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls School as an open classroom for ecological learning, and its plants will be donated to local urban greening projects. “Every single part of the pavilion has a life after,” Lal says. “Life doesn’t end when the pavilion ends.”
‘Sacred Nature — The Aranyani Pavilion’ is open to the public from February 4 to February 13 at the Sunder Nursery Gardens, Delhi. Learn more about the Aranyani Pavilion and register for a public tour here.
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