Desai Het Jay

IR2015

The Amritvarshi vav is surrounded by a colonial building, Panchkuva Darvaja, temple and bazaars. There are four bazaars in the immediate context of the vav namely Revadi bazaar, talpatri(plastic) market, cycle bazar, and Sindhi market. Mostly this area is a commercial area but people live in the inner parts of bazaar and a few workers stay on the upper floors of the shops. When the shopkeepers, customers, workers, auto drivers, etc. were interviewed it was realised that they don’t have a proper space to eat and the shopkeepers also don’t have a proper meeting space. Furthermore, when the people were asked their opinions about the vav it was concluded that for most of them Vav is just a place where the heritage walk people come to show it and click pictures and leave or just an abandoned place. The Vav is also not cleaned very often. In fact, most people In the new Ahmedabad don’t know that there exists a vav at Panchkuva . So, it lead me to a conclusion of making a community kitchen cum community cafe in the Vav namely MIND YOUR STEP! It would be a community kitchen in the lunch hours and the rest of the time it would be a heritage cafe On the stepwell with different kind of sitting patterns. There is an element of surprise in the design every time one sees.