City Architecture Students Design Unique Swedish Avenue

Avenue Design Contest (L to R) : Kaushal Tatiya ,Vivekanand Institute of Technology’s Padmabhushan Vasantdada Patil College of Architecture, Pune ; Parth Matkari,Vivekanand Institute of Technology’s Padmabhushan Vasantdada Patil College of Architecture, Pune ; Ms. Ulrika Sundberg, Consul General of Sweden,

The Swedish Avenue plan in PCMC is a unique project in urban development and will include smart transportation, garbage management, solar powered street lights and cycle tracks. 

The 3km Swedish Avenue will start from Harris bridge on Mula river in Dapodi and end at Forbes Marshall and is slated to be designed by young talented architects from VIT’s PVP College Of Architecture, Pune. Kaushal Tatiya and are the young brains would be working on the project for urban development.

Pune365 spoke to these bright minds- Paarth Matkari and Kaushal Tatiya who will be working on this project-

The competition was organized by the Consulate General of Sweden and it was basically to design an unique stretch of road which starts from Dapodi to Nasik Phata which will be eventually go on to be called Swedish Avenue by the PCMC.

They were looking for young minds to work for this project and that is why we decided to participate in the competition with a motive of contributing to the development of a smart city. That’s where the work for ‘Green Ganga’ began.

Just as the river Ganga is known to wash impurities of a person and re-energise him for a better life, our stretch believes in wearing the contamination off the man and invigorating him for the path ahead.

We thought of having a module for a footpath created by really understanding the crux of the street, considering the demands of the people in the neighbourhood of Swedish Avenue. The area consists of two elements; we have Industries at one side and residential accommodation on the other side.The lack of connectivity is because of the two edges of the road.

One needs to walk for 800 metres to the subway for crossing the road, therefore we decided to breach the gap. Hence we divided it into three modules -Learning, Relaxation and Healthy state, which later come together and form the corridor.

We’re inspired by the idea of innovation from Sweden. Innovating doesn’t mean that you introduce something new and hence we understood human needs, wants, desires, to the art of generating health and bending the dynamics of the market and economics, dividing and eventually organising it in a better manner.

Robust was the important element of our design- Green Ganga which is the name for the project. It means creating similar surfaces so that you don’t have to change the surface while walking. This is the only way you can build up a good network.

It was a month-long effort to prepare the module.  With the support of our Director Prasanna Desai who was a mentor and guided us with the design of the project. We are very thankful for the support we got from our mentor and the college.

These talented students further added that the whole idea to design this module was to have a sustainable road .

If we look at the conditions of our streets today, there are many things which can be improvised on the roads. The most recent example is the JM road, which has turned out to be a beautiful path, yet I think there are many things which are not running parallel to the design and as a designer I feel it could have been better.

Speaking about the sustainability, they added that keeping it green was an important principle while working on Green Ganga project. This was heightened by the city that has a climate where green can sustain easily. The other factors were reusing the material and the simple method and idea.

While working on a project model is very easy, the actual field work as many challenges, but the design can definitely be adopted for the urban development of the city. Kaushal adds.

Paarth Matkari, team partner says, “With respect to design, the project is not going to be easy to implement. It definitely has many challenges from materials to the financial budget of PCMC and on how ready they are to put a huge amount on this proposed plan.”

People in the surrounding area are deserted, If you see the context of the road now, it will have the metro in between and we have BRTS on both the sides, and then highways and service lanes. Thanks to all this, we have reached the peak of carbon emission, and we needed a counter balance to soak the carbon and trees are considered as the best carbon soakers.

Both of them have planned to work as city architects after completing their degrees and higher studies and contribute to the development of the smart city endeavour.

#Pune365 takes this opportunity to wish these bright young minds all success for this project and their careers ahead!

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Ankita Malekar