The design brief for G SEN Trophy 2012 was titled "Creation for conserving our Glorious Past".
India is a country having varied example of cultural traditions which has a direct impact of its built form especially in urban areas. Indian Architecture is a physical manifestation of its culture which has a glorious past. Architect has the ability to play a key role through their design to intervene such situations where the development pressure tries to absorb the rich cultural tradition through their design interventions. Architectural heritage is a showcase of our rich cultural tradition which should be passed on to the future generation. These heritage resources can be experience in a old commercial spine to a rich heritage residential core in various cities of India. Regeneration of traditional urban area is actually identifying and re-establishing its original resources through conservation and create sustainable economy which was originally present in those areas.
The aim of heritage conservation is to ensure that the cultural significance of heritage places is retained for future generations to enjoy. Under the Charter, “conservation" means all the processes of looking after a place so as to retain its cultural significance. It includes maintenance and may, according to circumstances, include preservation, restoration, reconstruction and adaptation and will commonly be a combination of more than one of these.” (Extract from Article 1 Burra Charter).
Today Architects should take the challenge to synthesize the traditional knowledge system which still lies behind the dwindling architectural heritage and come up with a sustainable solution through their design which will cater the present need and as well as enhance the significance of the cultural past.
We were required to select a historic commercial spine which has a rich cultural past housed in any part of a traditional Indian City. The site should also have a major regional significance in present context. Due to the present need and development pressure the character of the spine is dwindling or getting neglected. There could be a possibility of evidence of severe architectural of structural deterioration.
Our challenge is to redesign the spine after doing a detail research and documentation of the built heritage and its cultural tradition.
DOCUMENTATION, RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS
The selected historic spine should not be more than 500m and the must be leading to or starting from a major land mark city open space. The documentation should cover both sides of the street and neighbouring area to establish the original visual character of the Commercial Spine. The present land use should remain unchanged and participants need to mention it in their entries/ sheets.
Our chosen site Shivaji Road was in the old town part of the Metro city Pune.
We documented the entire spine analysing the landuse, functions, different points of interests, nodes and chowks, building heights, building condition etc.
We also studied the different physical attributes like the various built typologies, housing typologies, street sections and mixed land use functions.
Our documentation went beyond the physical ties of the entire stretch. We wanted to try and get a sense of the Intangible aspects of the area which contribute to and are a part of the peoples everyday socio-cultural life.
We concluded all our research and documentation with a SWOT analysis that will form the base of our design interventions and strategies.
DESIGN INTERVENTIONS
We started designing from the macro-level and kept zooming in slowly to each node and street.
The first design idea owing to the highly mixed use land use was to convert the entire street into a horizontal mall framing the cultural as well as built heritage through modern interventions of digitalization and interactive facades. The first step to enable this was to convert that stretch of the street into a pedestrian and cycle friendly zone. Will speak more on this later.
Historic node
This node is used to attract the tourists and add a new kind of tourist based commerce to the precinct. Shaniwarwada is a heritage site and has been dealt sensitively with minimum interventions and abiding the heritage guidelines of Pune city.
Window to the streets
The idea here was to treat the nodes as a window to showcase the various commodities sold in the lanes perpendicular to main spine. This indirectly helped giving the shopkeepers who are not located at the prime location the benefit of having a frontage along the main street.
Reclaiming the streets for the Pedestrians
The entire street section was redesigned to only cater to pedestrians, bicycles and public transport buses. All the vehicular traffic had been rerouted. Also, a central city level public plaza was designed along one of the nodes. A public plaza accessible to all in the the middle of the crowded cityscape acts as a breathing space that infuses life into the urban landscape.
Mandai Adaptation - Altering the Metaphysical
The street culminates at the Mandai or the main vegetable market which is an old heritage architectural landmark and designed as a food destination for traditional Puneri cuisine in different forms.
The proposal also encourages to involve the local women who presently prepare lunches for the working class and encourages them to take their entrepreneurship to the next level and help them become financially independent.
