George Verghese

4130-D

Re Imagining urban strategies for pedestrianizing urban public spaces Provocative spaces in our Indian urban built environment are all around us, but often conflicted like how public spaces should be. However in the case of Bhadra Plaza, the conflict of space is multi layered and one in particular that requires attention to for the functioning of a quality urban public space built for human interactions. Bhadra plaza currently is overrun by vehicles crisscrossing in the plaza. This conflict between people moving, the vendors and the vehicles makes the plaza more like a glorified junction than a quality space for interactions. How do we task an urban space to function as a pedestrian plaza in highly competed spaces? A loaded question but with a possibility to explore new strategies. A key strategy in building towards a public space is access. Access is the mediator to what happens inside a space. It's not the only solution or approach but it has its merits. The access to Bhadra Plaza constitutes of 09 entries of which 03 function as pedestrian only primarily because of its cross section being far too narrow to accommodate a vehicle, specifically also due to spillovers from shops that are in these spaces being unregulated. Maybe this strategy could be applied to the other 06 entries? This project looks at the these 06 spaces and decidedly allows the interfaces [shops / vendors] spill into the accesses, to be utilized by people. Additional programs have been added to make them work towards spatial occupation strategies. The core concept here is quite similar to swarm theories where in smaller functions that may differ [pockets of intervention at the accesses] may in fact work towards a single and larger goal. Here that goal is to build strategies to pedestrianize the plaza working from the outside to the inside.