Enhancing pilgrim experience
Every year around 25 million pilgrims visit the city, and the existing facilities weren't capable of handling such numbers.
Creating visitor experience
A majority of pilgrims are visitors looking to experience the city. Our research found that 60% of these visitors have no information about the history of the city due to a lack of museums or interpretation centers.
Restoring the former glory
Unplanned developments have suppressed the charm of this old city, a majority of design elements are hidden under and behind modern buildings.
DEFINING THE INTENT
Once the project was discussed with the team and a research and execution path was identified, we moved towards defining the intent of the design. This is where architecture came in, the brief given to us by the government authorities was limited, as architects, we expanded the brief and added components that helped in creating an enjoyable environment for the users while protecting the sanctity of the temples.
DESIGN PROMPT - THE BIG PICTURE
How does one enhance the pilgrim experience for the largest temple city in the country?
Elements of the design
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city roads
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city pedestrian loop
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temple entrance plaza
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cultural plaza
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interpretation center
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information buildings
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landscaping and experiences
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lake rejuvenation
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signage and wayfinding
Approximately 2.5 km ring of the dedicated outer vehicular corridor will facilitate the traffic of local and help in making the internal streets safe for local, pilgrim and pedestrian use. These streets not only connect temples, homes and businesses but also celebrates the living culture, traditions and facilitate ‘interaction.
THE CITY LOOP
With over a hundred temples, monuments and sacred water bodies, rituals and gatherings mostly happened in Lingaraj Temple Complex. These plazas ensure accessibility to all temples, reviving the link with the Old Town people and allowing community congregation.
USER PLAZAS
A need for facilities for the public and to engage, inform, and inspire the local rich history, it is necessary to incorporate a minimum number of newly built inserts for facilities for various activities. The built form should complement and respect the local architecture, and also encourage living traditions of local artisanal skills.
BUILT INTERVENTIONS
bhubaneswar experience.architecture
The built interventions were intended to serve as experiential spaces for visitors, helping bind the district together. The design language developed out of the elements from temple skins.
FACADE DEVELOPMENT
Inspired from the plan of the temple, the pavement pattern spans across all plazas and build facilities, with materials to match the temple architecture, the pavement develops a narrative around each intervention.
PAVEMENT PATTERN
In urban projects, street furniture and wayfinding plays an important role, especially in binding the visual elements together. Here, the inspiration came from the religious carvings from the temple's wall, creating a connection with the context of the city.
STREET FURNITURE
VISUALIZING THE MASTER PLAN
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RESIDENTS
PILGRIMS & PRIESTS
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SHOP OWNERS
TOURISTS
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CULTURAL GROUPS
CONSERVATION PROFESSIONALS
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
THE PROCESS
FUN FACT! We call this image 'the last super', it was taken at 2:00 am of the night when we came back from the site visit and involved a debrief from all our interviews - subject matter, immersions, contextual inquiries and observations.
we started with a basic debrief of the entire project and the scope, this helped to align the direction of the project and most importantly have the entire team on the same level.
IMMERSIVE USER RESEARCH
yatras - festivals
the city is famous for many festival walks that happen all year round. These walks invite tourists from all over the nation, and the infrastructure makeshift for the same is beyond imagination. To study the same our team traveled to the city and observed the functioning during the largest festival.
FUN FACT! In the image, the orange dots are pilgrims holding diyas (candles). Our problem space revolved around creating experiences to resolve chaos and create immersive experiences for these pilgrims. All 2 million of these along with another 23 million!
UNDERSTANDING USERS
pilgrims . temple officers . security personals . residents . shop owners . city officers . development authority
With a thorough understanding of our problem and detailed research, we moved towards defining our target users. Due to the scale and importance of the city, our proposal had to cater to multiple very important users.
A different festival is celebrated every month due to which there is constant chaos.
A CHAOS
The city is greatly influenced by temples and the typical temple architecture was an eye-opener
THE ARCHITECTURE LANGUAGE
Any festival in the CITY requires mega-infrastructure, and this is assembled overnight.
ROLE OF THE FESTIVALS
CONTEXTUAL OBSERVATIONS AND INTERVIEWS
TAKEAWAYS
The process was exhaustive! as you can see in the picture - one of the screens has the plans for the project open, the other one is rendering a virtual walkthrough and the third one has 3-D modeling going on it.
This jumping in the deeper end or 'pressurized' environment trained me in varied skills -
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I got skilled in managing stakeholders and client interactions.
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I got familiar with working with consultants and vendors.
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Creating designs that are born out of the context and have a clear rationale behind them.
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Managing a team and other resources while delivering quality-controlled solutions.
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And most importantly managing time - both mine and my teams!
Honestly, working on such a design-driven project at an early stage of my career was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. My involvement in the project started from the day it was introduced to the team - I was as an intern back then! further, I got involved in the design and concept development, site visits, user research where we met officials from the temples as well as shop owners and all other stakeholders. Somewhere along the way, I was hired as a full-time architect.