Mohammad Shaheer

born 1948; died 2015

India

Professor Mohammad Shaheer was a Delhi based landscape architect with a practice that started in 1976. He passed away in 2015. Dr. Shaheer was educated at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi (Architecture 1970, Urban Design 1972) and the University of Sheffield (Landscape Architecture, Ford Foundation Fellow 1972-74). He worked for two years in Northern Ireland before returning to India, where he spent the next 26 years teaching landscape architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. His practice concentrated primarily on large-scale public projects and conservation work and he was one of the most respected landscape architects in the country.

During the latter half of his academic career he was head of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture. Amongst his projects, his work at Sanskriti Kendra, Delhi, is well known; also interesting are the projects for the restoration of the gardens of Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi (2001) and the restoration of the Baghe-Babur in Kabul (2006). One of Dr. Shaheer's final projects was the garden at Sunder Nursery in Delhi. He was a member in the committee of Delhi Urban Arts Commission. He was also the initiator and co-editor of a popular textbook Landscape Architecture in India: A Reader, published in 2013.