Residential Avenue FOB

Project Name: Residential Avenue FOB
Authors: mayaPRAXIS

CITATION

Pedestrian public infrastructure, an omnipresent building activity across cities and towns, is largely governed by templatised and regularised constructions that have little or no relationship to the immediate context, as well as the important question of civic convenience. It is therefore rare to come across a piece of urban infrastructure that extends the domain of intervention to careful design and sensitive making.

The Residential Avenue Foot over Bridge connects two footpaths on either side of a motorway. Designed for pedestrians, the bridge accommodates access for the differently abled. The geometry of the structure enables access from two movement directions, simultaneously accommodating the elevators for ease of movement of persons in a wheelchair. Once on the bridge, the movements are further resolved by a cutout in the bridge that splits the access and extends the simple path across into a loop.

The structure of the bridge is designed to touch the ground lightly and carefully. The interface between the bridge and the street, from the top as well as the street level, is cleverly resolved with safety features for issues of vertigo and a sense of separation from the speeding traffic. A combination of movement choices – ramps, elevators, escalators – makes the pedestrian experience and ease central to the design.

This small piece of infrastructure resolves movements eloquently, with a sense of playfulness and delight. The design energies for this project are focussed on resolution of critical aspects at the core of the pedestrian experience in the movement across the street, all the while bringing architecture to bear on the typological question in a process of rethinking this common-place piece of urban infrastructure and therefore, The Residential Avenue FOB by mayaPRAXIS is awarded a Citation in The Merit List.