Sunita Kohli is an Indian interior designer, architectural restorer and furniture manufacturer. She had restored and decorated Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President's House), Parliament House Colonnade (1985–1989), the Prime Minister's Office and Hyderabad House in New Delhi.
She was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1992.
Early life and education
Born in Lakshmi Mansions, a noted Victorian building in Lahore, to Indar Prakash and Chand Sur, Sunita Kohli grew up in a liberal household in Lucknow as her father was an Arya Samaji and who had migrated to Lucknow after the partition. She studied at a Roman Catholic convent in Lucknow. Growing up her father would take her along to auctions and sales, looking for old lamps and furniture. Later she graduated in English Literature from Lady Shri Ram College (Delhi University) in New Delhi, followed by an M.A. in English from Lucknow University.
Career
She taught at Loreto Convent Lucknow, before the "accidental" start of her career in interior design. After her marriage, she and her husband started frequenting kabadi shops in their free time, looking for 19th century English furniture and lamps in Lucknow, Rajasthan and the hill resorts of Dehradun and Mussoorie. Soon Kohli converted her interest into an antiquarian business through which she sold Davenport desks and Regency wine tables. She learnt restoration of furniture from local master-craftsmen, which led to the start of her restoration business.
She established Sunita Kohli Interior Designs, an interior design firm in New Delhi, in 1971. In the following year was established Sunita Kohli & Company, which manufactures contemporary classic furniture and fine reproductions of Art Deco, Biedermeier and Anglo-Indian colonial furniture. Most recently, her company K2india whose CEO is her architect daughter Kohelika Kohli launched a fine collection of Mid-Century Furniture. Her career, added another dimension, when in the mid-1970s she established in partnership, another design firm which was commissioned to design a small hotel for the Oberoi Group, near the Khajuraho temples, The Oberoi in Bhubaneshwar and the Hotel Babylon in Baghdad. This firm closed but other hotel design projects followed in Cairo, Aswan and El-Arish in Egypt- The Oberoi Marriott Mena House Hotel and Casino, overlooking the Pyramids of Giza; two luxury hotel cruise boats on the Nile for the Oberoi Group; The Oberoi Aswan in Upper Egypt and The Oberoi in El-Arish, on the north coast of the Sinai Peninsula on the Mediterranean Sea. In the mid-1990s, she designed The Oberoi Philae Cruiser, another luxury hotel boat. For Mr. PRS Oberoi, she restored and decorated, for his personal use, the 250-year-old Naila Fort, near Jaipur.
Over the years she has designed several hotels, resorts and private residences in India and Sri Lanka. In Lahore, Pakistan, she has also worked on the restoration and conversion into a boutique hotel, of a late Sikh-period haveli in the Old City, overlooking the 17th century world heritage sites of the Lahore Fort and the Badshahi Mosque. In the early 1990s, she did the interior design of the British Council Building in New Delhi. She also designed the National Assembly Building in Thimpu, Bhutan. This Parliament Building was again worked on in 2010, by K2INDIA for the SAARC Summit in Bhutan. She has also been involved in the restoration and redecoration of numerous British Raj period buildings in New Delhi, mainly designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, Sir Robert Tor Russell and Sir Herbert Baker, including Rashtrapati Bhawan (formerly Viceroy's House), the Prime Minister's Office, Parliament House and Hyderabad House.
Sunita Kohli has been the chairperson and founder trustee of an NGO, Umang, that worked for street and slum children. She is deeply involved in primary education and health. She is a founding director of 'Satyagyan Foundation' in Varanasi - an organisation that works with children's education, women's literacy, women's advocacy and women's empowerment through vocational training; and is the chairperson of the board of governors of 'Save-a-Mother', an NGO which is dedicated to decreasing maternal and infant mortality rates in India. She is a patron of the Women's Cancer Initiative in Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai.
In 1992, she was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India "for contribution to national life by excellence in the field of Interior Design and Architectural Restoration". In the same year, she received the "Mahila Shiromani Award", recognising women of achievement, by Mother Teresa.