Up in the hills of Khandala, in the Sahyadri Hills, is Abbey 301. Housed within a 200 year-old former chapel, this new intimate cultural space opens this month as a dedicated venue for music, spoken word, and small format artistic gatherings. Conceived as a place for engagement rather than spectacle, Abbey 301 is intentionally limited in scale and frequency.
The launch season opens with a robust weekend programme featuring singer-songwriter Nikhil D’Souza, poet and lyricist Kausar Munir, the Sanjay Divecha Trio, and bansuri maestro and Grammy Award winner Rakesh Chaurasia. Concurrently, the grounds of Abbey 301 will host an outdoor exhibition of 32 ceramic sculptures by contemporary artist G. Reghu, extending the cultural experience beyond the performance space. “Abbey 301 is an attempt to create a cultural sanctuary—where architecture, art, and audience come together with intention. This is not about scale or speed, but about continuity and care,” says Safala Shroff, chairperson of Abbey 301’s steering committee.
There was clearly no space in the local area of Khandala for any cultural activity. In the early days of brainstorming, the Abbey 301 team, held a trial performance to see if anyone would come to this space. Some 40 people were invited but 133 showed up. “We realized that there was a real paucity, a need and a desire to have something to do besides taking selfies. So we decided to make it a mixed cultural space which will cater to the dynamic arts which are theatre, spoken word, music, and so on, and the static arts – photography sculpture painting etc.,” says Pushan Kirpalani, creative director.
Named as per the area’s postal code, Abbey 301 sits in the Sahyadri Hills between Mumbai and Pune. Held by the Kotak family for over six decades, the chapel has been sensitively restored under the stewardship of Kamini Kotak and architect Adil Dholakia of Five Cross Architects. While there are many instances where chapels, castles and other historical buildings have been repurposed in the UK and Germany, in India this is first. Kamini Kotak had envisioned the conservation of Abbey 301 and the revitalization efforts to make it into a space of culture, art and community.
The building has gone through three stages of conservation over the last two and a half decades. There have been aesthetic restoration efforts towards the stained glass. This time the conservation efforts were more reinforced in terms of safeguarding the structure itself. Most of the conservation work has been done over the last six months. According to Adil Dholakia, the conservation mandate given to his firm was that say 100 years down the line if someone else wanted to make interventions with the fabric, they have to be able to do so with maximum reversibility.
The conservation approach respects the building’s original structure, scale, and architectural language, with contemporary interventions intentionally kept to a minimum—introduced only where necessary to enhance acoustics, lighting, safety, and long-term use. The result is a space where history remains legible, and culture can unfold with care. “Our idea was that when we are looking at heritage, can today’s heritage act as aggregators or catalysts for communities via the lenses of art and culture,” says Adil Dholakia, architect, Five Cross Architects.
Dholakia’s team has been very sensitive to every single nut and bolt that has gone into the restoration. In phase one of the conservation efforts, the idea was to look at the roof restoration work for a place that was poised to become a strong cultural centre and an arts and performance centre. “Our efforts at conservation was trying to enrich the building by its characters, by the elements that devise it – the buttress, the stained glass, the stone, the pitched roof – and of course we had to contemporize the structure for usage. Mechanical systems have been introduced inside the building but they are all reversible,” says Dholakia.
The Five Cross teams spent weeks on the roof. Every square inch of the building was documented and reconstructed in their drawings. The roof was originally in black Japan paint. Kotak’s suggestion was to strip the paint and keep its natural character. In the knave, about 35-40 per cent of the boards were replaced. The trusses are as is as there was no damage to them and will probably stay for another 200 years. The dormer windows on the roof, which were part of the mechanics of the ventilation for the space, were recreated. “We were also conscious in our approach that we did not want to mindlessly rip everything off. So in our documentation we identified and assessed each plank of wood and marked it with annotations and replaced only the planks of wood or only the boarding that were rotten beyond a certain percentage,” says Vishakha Gangar, architect-researcher, Five Cross Architects.
The Abbey was divided in three parts – the knave, the altar and the octagonal vestry. The conservation work was happening parallel in these three zones with different teams and masons. “The octagonal vestry was completely dilapidated, and we reconstructed this from scratch. We have added structural elements to it for its longitivity in terms of its stability. We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel but with the help of structural engineering and the idea of adaptation we have pushed the lifespan of this octagonal roof by another 30-40 years by this intervention,” says Dholakia.
According to Dholakia, the work at Abbey 301 was more repair above replacement. In the entire 2,500 ft2 structure, 70 per cent has been repaired. The large amount of replacement or renewal has been in the vestry. “As we were conscious about the carbon footprint, whatever was salvaged was reused in another area where it could be used before new materials were brought in,” he says.
Abbey 301 has been conceived as more than a venue. It is envisioned as a meeting place for artists and audiences who share a belief in the arts and their future. The opening weekend marks the beginning of that journey—an inaugural gathering to welcome a new home for creativity, reflection, and community.
Alongside public performances, Abbey 301 will host rehearsals, residencies, and closed-door cultural conversations, underscoring its commitment to the artistic process as much as to presentation. A very promising space. Well worth a visit.