The Green Trail

People’s movement adds energy to city life, and the city provides a series of places where people can move safely and comfortably. The central idea is to incorporate a small city system into this trail and transform it into an urban common as an extension of urban life. The green trail is interwoven through the development to create a strong sense of community. The trail ideates with the context and people’s relationship with it.

The green trail strengthens the links between the city’s Celebrated public space the riverfront and the neighbourhood of Motera. The more than 1kmlong shopping, pedestrian and cycle zone forms a central axis running through the neighbrohood centre and is designed largely as shared space.

Keyplan

The emphasis on creating a rich pedestrian experience for the community, by retaining an organic character of the green and contrasting it with the simple and functional architecture of the buildings straddling it.

The sport trail, which begins at the aquatic center, is programmed with an unobstructed marathon track, a pedestrian pathway, a cycle track, and plaza seating amidst the landscape mounds.

At the confluence of two great public spaces

Central Retail Plaza

Melding of Landscape with Experiential Information

The central retail plaza, connects the regional level public space, the lake park to the city level public space, riverfront and is progammed with interactive displays and exhibits of sculptures of atheletes/ eminent events/ acitivites, commemorating the Olympic Games,. A pedestrian-only and cycling trail extends outside the park in both directions, linking major streets directly to the park’s walkways. The mounds and sunken plazas acts as retentive landscapes and aid in water management during monsoon.

Keyplan

Central Retail Plaza

Melding of Landscape with Experiential Information

The central retail plaza, connects the regional level public space, the lake park to the city level public space, riverfront and is progammed with interactive displays and exhibits of sculptures of atheletes/ eminent events/ acitivites, commemorating the Olympic Games,. A pedestrian-only and cycling trail extends outside the park in both directions, linking major streets directly to the park’s walkways. The mounds and sunken plazas acts as retentive landscapes and aid in water management during monsoon.

For some exciting art, interactive sculptures experience and Retail therapy!

Conclusion

The mix of the different strategies and actions, through the inter-relationships made possible by the spatial framework bring forth the successful emergence of the overall goals of the project towards a connected, healhty, resilient and culturally rich place providing an answer to how to address the necessity for a successful legacy planning by taking into advantage the amount of identity and limelight the Games could bring to the neighborhood. The clear vision for ‘The Urban Green Commons’ makes it possible to gain subsidies on different domains (ranging from sports, culture, ecology, housing, to mobility) and attract relevant users and investors.

Key Learnings

Understanding the Mega event Strategy and Contextualising a Site

Firstly, the Master Plan studio aided us in delayering and understanding of the processes involved in the Olympic Games and how the benefits of it can be translated a neighborhood level masterplanning. The project also helped in analysing the City level and Precinct level context of a given location, to understand complex relationships that exist within the urban fabric of a city.

References

Dendura, M. (2019). Olympic Infrastructure—Global Problems of Local Communities on the Example of Rio 2016.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338145686_Olympic_Infrastructure-Global_Problems_of_ Local_Communities_on_the_Example_of_Rio_2016_PyeongChang_2018_and_Krakow_2023

Newman, H. K. (1999). Neighborhood impacts of Atlanta’s Olympic Games. Community Development Journal, 34(2), 151–159. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44257467

Thanjavur Ramakrishnan, R., Marimuthu, BN., Balasubramanian, P., Ramaiah Perumalsamy, GB., Lahoti, R., Vijaykumar, M., Gogri, Y., (2021) ‘LOOPS AS LEVERAGE- Spatial Framework for Circular NeighborhoodsCase of Koundampalayam, Coimbatore.’ https://issuu.com/radoffice/docs/loops_as_leverage

The project assisted us in becoming comfortable with the scale of a huge Master Plan design and the process of strategizing such a large site with a distinct narrative. The concepts addressed from developing open space strategies, network, mobility, and building type strategies with the lasting Olympic legacy provided a challenging experience of integrating vital urban systems onto a brownfiled site in interesting ways.

Communication of Design

The studio outcomes aided us in effectively presenting our ideas of a Master plan, both in terms of drawings as well as to develop a strong communication strategy. The focus on developing a narrative that explores ideas of post-olympic living scenarios, safe and environment friendly communities for the future was a learning that resonated with reality as well as future oriented.

Ijzerman, O. (2018). ‘Towards an Olympic legacy for all: Regeneration oriented design principles for Olympic legacy enhancing the social sustainability of Rotterdam South’ https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:6841cb43-c831-44e9-8d95-831e87210ba4?collection=education

(2018). Chengdu Tianfu Olympic Sports City. Sasaki. https://www.sasaki.com/projects/chengdu-tianfu-olympic-sports-city/