Studio, Gallery & Bookshop
SAKS is a coming together of India's most accomplished designers and creative individuals. Besides its educational programmes and research, SAKS offers design consultancy, a gallery for art exhibitions, and a bookshop of rare Asian art and design books — making it truly a confluence of creativity.
Design Studio
SAKS is a coming together of the most accomplished designers and creative individuals from all parts of India, with a track record of very high-level experience in designing and executing major projects.
Taking advantage of this unique assembly of talent, SAKS offers Design Consultancy and Advisory Services across four core areas.
The eminent Advisory Board of SAKS ensures that the best outcome is offered for a given need — to showcase and ensure that the world is delighted again with Indian creativity.
Enquire about a project →Permanent and temporary exhibitions, museum experience design, environmental narrative, and spatial storytelling. Drawing on decades of work in India's most significant cultural institutions.
Immersive experience design, interactive installations, and digital-physical hybrid environments. Combining the depth of Indian aesthetic tradition with contemporary technology.
Environmental graphics, wayfinding systems, and signage design — with particular expertise in bilingual and multilingual applications for Indian public spaces.
Design and planning for cultural events, institutional occasions, and public programmes — from concept through execution.
Permanent Exhibition
The permanent Sugiura exhibition at Villa Appavou houses the most significant collection of Kohei Sugiura's work in India — books, posters, publications, and process material from across a career spanning six decades.
It is the only permanent exhibition of his work outside Japan. It is not a display — it is a working archive, available to students, researchers, and visitors as a primary material for the study of Asian design methodology.
Enquire about access →Sugiura's work spans the full range of graphic design — books, magazines, posters, postage stamps, exhibition graphics — all rooted in a single, sustained argument about the relationship between Asian visual culture and contemporary design practice. No other institution in India has assembled this material in one place.
The exhibition includes first editions of his landmark book designs, original poster artwork, documentation of his methodology, and material from his collaborations with Indian, Chinese, and Korean visual philosophers — including the material from the 2007 Nanyang seminar at which Prof Kirti Trivedi was the credited Indian contributor.
The exhibition is open to visitors, researchers, and course participants. Groups may request a guided tour with Prof Trivedi or a senior faculty member.
Art Gallery
Separate from the Sugiura permanent collection, SAKS's gallery is a live exhibition space for invited artists and designers — adding to the cultural landscape of Puducherry and making SAKS a genuine meeting place for creative people in the city.
Exhibition proposals →The gallery programme will feature work by SAKS founding artists, invited practitioners from across India and internationally, and occasional group shows organised around themes that connect to the institution's research and teaching. The gallery is not a commercial space — it exists to make ideas visible, not to sell work, though works may be available for acquisition through the artist directly.
The first gallery programme will be announced closer to the institution's opening in August 2026. For exhibition proposals, curators, and partnership enquiries, use the Enquire form.
Bookshop
A collection of rare art and design books from Asia, posters and prints, original paintings, and craft objects — making SAKS truly a confluence of creativity in Puducherry.
Bookshop enquiries →