TheApproach
The museum begins outside.
The building does not present a façade so much as a walk. It sits low and long in its grounds, faced in coursed sandstone, with a shallow water channel running parallel to the path and mature trees closing the sky overhead.
Along the front runs an arcade of deep arched bays, each one lit from within. In daylight they read as shadow; at dusk they become the brightest thing on the site, and the building turns into a row of lamps.
This is the museum making its first argument before it has said anything. Sanchi is not a building you arrive at. It is a hill you climb, along a path, with the monument revealing itself in stages. The entrance sequence here is built to rehearse that walk in miniature — approach, colonnade, threshold — so that the visit and the site share a rhythm.
Approach, colonnade, threshold.
Gallery
The forecourt, the water channel and the lit arcade at dusk.
