Walk in the Park: Metro Stations as Urban Artifacts

Project idea

“Walk in the Park” is an experiment where the design for the transport infrastructure is driven by neighborhood it sits in, giving each metro station its own unique identity that is deeply rooted within the community.

Project description

Rapidly growing cities like Mumbai has seen a boom in the transient infrastructure development and emergence of standardized urban inserts like the metro station. A Walk in the Park was an experiment to push the imagination of a metro station from a modular infrastructure object to an urban insert that gives back to the community. Conceptualized as a green corridor connecting the City Park in BKC to the Mangroves along the Vakola Nullah, the project erased the concourse level and re imagined it as an urban park at the street level that revived and activated the underbelly with urban social life. It not only gave back to the neighborhood and the city, but dramatically improved the functionality of the insert from beyond just mobility. The walk in the park is the poetic driving force for not the experiences curated but for the structure itself as well.

Technical information

Driven by the experience of “A walk in the park”, the columns, which are the heaviest aspect of these stations, and its structural grid were derived from the chaotic order of the trees of the forest. The concourse is re-imagined as a street level park with islands. While contributing to the context, it gives the passengers an option of a fast route and a slow meandering one. This experience of the park is continued to the platform through visual connection with the foliage of the trees in the park as well as the roof of the station resembling the foliage of trees.

Documentation

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