Sunita Kohli is a national award-winning interior designer, furniture manufacturer and architectural conservator-restorer since 1971, specializing in public buildings like the Parliament Building of Bhutan, Rashtrapati Bhavan and the Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum in New Delhi and has designed several hotels and luxury hotel boats for the Oberois, particularly in Egypt.
She is the President of K2India, co-founded in 2010, with her award- winning architect daughter, Kohelika Kohli.
Sunita Kohli is the former Chairperson of the Board of the School of Planning and Architecture in Bhopal, the first woman to head a National Institute of Excellence. She is also the first interior designer to be conferred the Padma Shri in this discipline in 1992. In 1992 she was also presented the Mahila Shiromani Award by Mother Teresa, now Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Since then she has been awarded many Lifetime Achievement Awards. In February 2023, Sunita Kohli was conferred an honorary Doctor of Literature degree by Karnawati University, Gujarat.
Sunita Kohli is an essayist and author with five more books under preparation for publication, among them a major book on ‘World Heritage Sites in India’ and ‘A Children’s Book on Delhi’s Architecture’. A previous book, ‘The Lucknow Cookbook’, co-authored with her mother Chand Sur, is now in its tenth print run and is considered a modern classic. ‘KALA – Essays on Contemporary Design Aesthetics’, a compendium of essays edited by her, was first launched in Milan and London in Oct. ’22; in New York in Nov. ’22; and at the Lahore Literary Festival in February 2023. A new and expanded edition of ‘KALA’ will be published by early 2025 and will be launched in many metropolitan cities in India and in a few other countries.
Her most recent book is ‘The India Cookbook – From the Tables of My Friends’. This is the second book of her Cuisine Trilogy.
