Thiruvananthapuram, India

Project by: Aafreen Fathima K. A

Commercial Bridge- An urban connect

The project is primarily an outcome of the observation of a shopaholic pedestrian who could not
take the boring gap between two commercially important centres in Bangalore- commercial
street & brigade road. Though these commercial centres are highly dense pedestrian nodes in the
CBD , the walkable short stretch between the nodes was devoid of pedestrian activity. The
project tends to solve the issue of dispersion of the commercial hubs and the lack of active
connectivity between them by inducing activity attracting pedestrians. The absence of vacant
land near the intervention area proposes the solution on a bridge.
The project intends to act as an extension of the commercial centres at its ends connecting the
commercial hubs of Bangalore- Commercial street and Brigade road, to eventually form a single
commercial hub, promoting pedestrian activity between the streets and solving apathy in the land
use pattern. Further, the project aims to be a solution for the issues identified in the study area at
macro, micro and site level , serving the needs of the users and strengthening the site potentials.
The bridge also establishes a direct connection from the nearest metro station to the commercial
centres. The project tries to explore how the concept of street shopping and mall shopping can be
combined to serve a better shopping experience. It is also a response to people's need for a
completely pedestrianised street shopping experience in the city, being the major reason for the
success of the open street event organised on the intervention area in February 2016.Apart from
the commercial requirements, it also deals with recreation and entertainment spaces as required
by the users of the study area. Besides the bridge, the project looks into the utilisation of the
unused army land in the area to propose spaces which will run on army-public partnership.
The project tries to create a stereotype for an activity bridge, which can possibly be a solution for
scarcity of land expected to face in the future due to the obvious population explosion. It is an
architectural experimentation of how variably services and infrastructure can be approached in a
bridge.The development of spaces below and around the bridge is also looked at. Preference for
elevated spaces being proved by projects like Highline in New York, becomes true inspiration for
the project. The concept of habitable bridges and activity bridges already been demonstrated
years back in Ponte Vecchio, Galata bridge etc. becomes a relevant solution to the future scarcity
of space to build.

P17-3436