Community space opens beneath an elevated highway in Mumbai

MVRDV has shared imagery of the not too long ago accomplished One Inexperienced Mile, a public area activation undertaking tucked beneath an elevated part of Mumbai’s Senapati Bapat Marg, a significant roadway that stretches almost seven miles by the guts of India’s largest metropolis. The undertaking, conceived by MVRDV in collaboration with native co-architect StudioPOD, units out to supply “a repeatable method to sustainable city growth that asserts a brand new benchmark for underused public areas within the intense Indian metropolis,” per the agency.

The identify of the nascent neighborhood area refers to each the luxurious pockets of vegetation distributed all through the newly activated space and to the Golden Mile, an off-the-cuff moniker for a stretch of Senapati Bapat Marg lined by a handful of high-profile buildings. (The freeway rebrand was reportedly first pitched by Indian developer Lodha Group in 2016 throughout the building of Trump Tower Mumbai within the upscale Worli district.)

As famous by MVRDV in a press launch, StudioPOD, a multidisciplinary observe specializing in city design and planning, was initially tapped to remodel a roughly 2,600-foot-long stretch of streetscape operating alongside Senapati Bapat Marg by Nucleus Workplace Parks, a subsidiary of actual property behemoth Blackstone Group; Rotterdam-headquartered MVRDV was then invited to collaborate on the “most transformative a part of the scheme:” changing a swath of unused and unwelcoming area positioned instantly beneath the freeway right into a multitasking, modestly sized neighborhood asset that “would tackle the flyover’s detrimental impression whereas responding to the realm’s lack of greenery and bodily facilities.”

As additional detailed by the agency, StudioPOD performed the preliminary work to raised outline the area (and its future customers) whereas exploring potential programmatic makes use of. MVRDV got here on board to assist understand the design, together with the signature blue stripes that weave by the area. A particular focus was positioned on establishing secure and seamless connections for pedestrians and cyclists all through the quick space, an effort that included creating new bike paths and crosswalks and enhanced lighting. “The world’s lighting idea works alongside programmatic components and concrete furnishings options to make a recognisable place, and guarantee security across the clock,” elaborated MVRDV.

“Maybe in the future we are going to see the tip of noisy, disagreeable highways carving up our cities, however for now they’re nonetheless sadly a crucial evil – one you may see in Mumbai greater than most cities,” stated MVRDV accomplice Stefan de Koning in an announcement. “One Inexperienced Mile asks the query: what if we anticipated highways to present one thing again to the locations they lower by? A flyover can present some shade in a sizzling metropolis, and creates a small space of land that may’t be developed with tall buildings. It’s not such a loopy concept to make that right into a public area.”

One Inexperienced Mile is split right into a collection of greenery-flanked public “rooms,” every with its personal distinct perform: lounge, gymnasium, a shaded seating space for socializing, a efficiency area, and a studying room. The presence of vegetation—plantings will be discovered on vertical screens, in planters, on retaining partitions, and protecting the archway that marks the principle entrance to the area—promotes biodiversity within the coronary heart of the Mumbai whereas additionally dampening noise air pollution and supply a cooling impact in a heatwave-prone metropolis that’s solely getting hotter. A rainwater harvesting system shops and filters water captured throughout the monsoon season; this water is used irrigate One Inexperienced Mile’s many plantings.

Meant to be replicated all through Mumbai, One Inexperienced Mile is ready to increase even additional with plans to increase the revitalized, community-centric streetscape to span almost 10,000-feet of the elevated freeway’s greater than 36,000-foot whole size.

Though a greenery-swaddled neighborhood area that brings new life to a useless area positioned beneath/alongside transportation infrastructure is definitely new to Mumbai, comparable initiatives have been accomplished or are in-progress in different cities throughout the globe. These cities embrace San Francisco, Brooklyn, Miami, Seattle, and Toronto, the place the Bentway is reimagining the underside of the Gardiner Expressway by way of a rising patchwork of sheltered areas that provide new leisure alternatives and singular out of doors venues for public artwork and cultural programming. AN visited with the Bentway group final month and can publish an in-depth look on that ongoing undertaking later this summer time.