Raghav Kohli

4130-D

Bhadra mela

The site is Bhadra Plaza. The character of the plaza looks as if it’s a fairground, yet the design elements at all different areas focus on creating character pertinent to that particular edge. The very initial idea was to find out the unused open spaces around the plaza, and creating urban inserts which would diffuse the crowd from inside karanj bagh towards different areas at the site and increase the possibility of engagement and interaction with different stakeholders at once. The design focuses on programming large unused, un-programmed open spaces in the plaza and increasing crowd flow at these places by also luring the kids living currently inside the karanj bagh. Also, the design assumes the plaza to be a pedestrian only zone having parking area on the outskirts of the plaza. 


Report Content

Life_in_boxes The narrative cartography tries to focus on the movements, daily life and space perception of innumerable drug users in Bhadra Plaza precincts. There are 25-30 families living inside the plaza, most of whom are less than the age of 10. Since most of the squatters living inside karanj bagh (in an area of 80x20m) are drug addicts, most of them are aged between 8 and 18 years.

Himabhai_library As we enter the plaza, the Himabhai library stays hidden behind the chaos of vending, the different unused structures and the fact that it is 159 year old, first library in Ahmedabad is unknown by most of us. So the design focuses on creating a regularly patterned, well illuminated reading area and green space on the library edge to increase the edge usage with increased crowd flow.

Karanjbagh Moving ahead towards the karanj bagh, you slip off as you try to enter a huge, wide and stern boundary. There is a large area unused even by the only users who have occupied all of the seating area. The circular fountain boundary is broken, unused, full of garbage and without a function. So the design focuses to create an informal play area in that space.

uco_museum_plinth Moving through this crowd to the uco museum plinth, there is traffic all around, with chaos of vendors right in front of you, occupying the whole edge, with people sitting on the extremely small steps of the plinth and all you find on the plinth is just garbage, open defecation, the worst smell all around and wastage of such a central place in the plaza. So, the design focuses on creating an amphitheatre in the space with defined activity cubicles.

Open_platform Looking towards your west, you see vendors occupying an edge of rectangular open space which faces a mosque, has a few vehicles parked on it, some chairs and just the garbage on it. This space is explored to be a universal play area, with defined accessibility point and boundary around it with solution for seating and space usage.

Teen_darwaza Going through the traffic towards teen darwaza, there are vehicles and vendors all around the teen darwaza, but it is all surrounded by garbage yet again. You feel like going on the rooftop of teen darwaza but after many efforts of finding its entry when you manage to move vendors from in front of the small, dark and scary tunnel moving down to it, you don’t feel like going up anymore. Yet you find courage to go up and as you move through it, you find yourself to be at a large ro

Cloth_market As you move on the edge of teen darwaza, you enter a narrow, crowded lane with small colourful shops on both sides, slowly leading you to a wider, colourful cloth market, flustered with crowd and venders all around you. Then you move to find a space right next to the former one, and there is just garbage and some vehicles and broken things spluttered into that space. The edge of this space has some back facades facing it or some closed shops. Through design, this area has been re