Karrthik Subramanian S RM

CEPT University | Ahmedabad

The last few decades has encountered the pressure of the ever – increasing population along with the expansion of urban area limits. This directly corresponds to the increased transportation ( bridges, metro and rail transport, etc ) and recreational ( public parks, gardens, etc ) infrastructure projects. These projects constitute a big part of urban development in our Indian cities. Though the intentions of these projects are genuine, their architectural approaches are usually singular and limited. They often don’t respond to the immediate physical / social context and just ends up becoming inaccessible parts of the city. And also, instead of exploiting the potential of locational assets as prime collective or public spaces, these projects are just reduced to a set of buildings with homogeneous activities. 

So there is an urgent need for transportation and recreational infrastructure projects … 

1. To be rethought / redeveloped in order to cater the demands of the inhabitants of a specific 

project and also the local neighbourhood around it. 2. To be embedded in their urban context through its collective / public spaces by developing few programmatic and spatial strategies for these spaces in sync with activities in a given building type and its urban context. 

The conflict / focus here is … Competing interests between individual identity of a metro station, as a means for passengers to provide mobility facilities and for Shahpur neighbourhood ( Shared community ) to provide spaces for recreational activities in order to promote a healthy community / lifestyle. 

This project looks at the typology of a transit, focussing on the upcoming metro station at Shahpur in Ahmedabad by GMRC. The station proposed in Shahpur is an underground station, mainly because of the presence of heritage monuments in the heritage city of Ahmedabad. This metro project also aims to develop a critical approach to architectural design where buildings are not seen as isolated entity, but that are deeply embedded in the urban fabric of the city. And also, based on contextual awareness along with a strong need to relate buildings to individual users as well as collective needs, the project investigates and explores various strategies and architectural alternatives which will make it more accessible and inclusive in character. 

Now, Considering a metro station in present day scenario … everything around is fast paced. Starting from an individual using a metro by morning for his work to returning back in the evening and following it up with his / her last mile connectivity option … everything is fast paced. So, it is really important for an individual to take a pause and indulge in some form of a recreation activity. 

And at the same time, of all the second tier cities in India … Green space per capita of Ahmedabad is the least. That too Shahpur, being in old city of Ahmedabad with an increased density definitely has less green / open space. 

Therefore, Shahpur metro station along with its vertical recreation / multipurpose centre proposed with collective / public spaces for a stretch of 300m, will provide neighbouring communities and also commuters with recreation spaces … in order to provide a healthy neighbourhood ( focussing on activities leading to public well-being ).