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Late Su. Shri. Lata Mangeshkar Chowk

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The Concept: Music on the Street

Celebrating People, Music & The Life of Street”

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Instead of feeling sad over the loss of our beloved Didi, we tried to celebrate her music, simplicity, and legacy. Instead of creating a god like statue, we approached to design a sense of space which gives vibe of her musics and her soul. Hypothesis was to create more than just a street but a vibrant public space where people can interact with her music. The challenge of the project is to give physical form to her intangible presence of music.

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Path as stairs and stairs as seats: Footpath steps down, allowing people to congregate and loiter. The falling steps is giving people both a vantage point, and low enough to put them in action. It’s inviting people to engage themselves in group of activities, sit, rest, watch, listen to the music.

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Pockets of Activity: Underpasses are safe to cross a busy junction and cool place to rest in hot summer. But often these underpasses are dead and abandoned making it unsafe. A strong origin and destinations of a path creates momentum. Activity along the path make it natural for people to pause and get involved. It develops vibrancy; making the underpass lively and safe.

The pattern of the path has been inspired from the musical instruments giving it an rhythmic effect. The musical notes of Late Su.Shri. Lata Mangeshkar translates into the landscape recreating memories of the legendary songs.

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The statue in the middle/ focal point/ Sikhara: Late Su.Shri. Lata Mangeshkar’s statue at the center gives a strong and steady pulse to the square, drawing people towards the center, like a candle in the middle of the room. The traffic island has been designed with white stone, water and golden letters; representing the simplicity and purity of Late Su.Shri. Lata Mangeshkar’.

The central traffic island is inaccessible to general public, which develops a higher degree of fascination. Also keeps the statue clean.

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We tried to keep our intervention to minimum. We managed to carved out public spaces keeping the present carriageway intact.

These are the following major proposed changes:

1. Increase the size of present roundabout from 8 meter to 18 meter dia. to achieve a turning radius of 12m and above. This increased the capacity of the roundabout and improves the traffic clearance speed. Also provides adequate central island space for the statue.

2. Extended all the roads to roundabout and improved the road geometry. Which removed all vehicle conflict points.

3. Removed the slip road connecting Ayodhya spine road to NH 330. It was unnecessary and creating additional six vehicle conflict point. Also now the public realm is extended from street to square uninterruptedly.

4. Optimized the unused median space to provide a safe and two way NMT track of 3 meter wide.

5. Optimized the service road and median space by providing IPT (Intermediate public transport) interchange parking to cater additional visitor’s footfall.

6. Removed road encroachments and provided a safe formal vending area along with other attractions and facilities like toilet, shade, street furnitures, vegetation etc. for the informal street activity to flourish which will increase the business of the street hawkers, yet keep the carriageway clean.

7. Safe and strategic pedestrian crossing with pelican signal has been proposed along with a functional active underpass serving as memorial gallery.

8. Off- street parking has been proposed, and more may be provided, wherever possible to remove haphazard on-street parking from NH-330. Later the parkings may be transformed into MLP as per demand.

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Public space disconnected from the street edge increases the conflict between Vehicle & Pedestrian, reduces foot fall, decreases the intensity of the activity. All the best examples of vibrant squares have public spaces connected to street edge.

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