Unfolding Narratives

prasaad, pooja material, embellishments for the deity and assorted
food, sweets, snacks and tea stalls. Finding no other space to occupy,
they built over the footpath, pushing pedestrians to the road, jostling
for space with rickshaws, cars and goods vehicles. Further, the
approach road is extremely slow moving and congested during regular
days and a logistics nightmare on festive days.
CASE FOR INTERVENTION
Convergence of multi-mode means of access: The temple is accessed
through a single 10.5 meters wide road, almost 400 meters in length
aptly called the Rani Rashmoni Road.
The street originates at a traffic rotary, a junction for the PWD road
leading from Kolkata on South-East direction, the PWD road leading
to Vivekanand Setu on the Western Direction and Ramkrishna
Paramhans Dev Road leading North. The rotary is also the entrance
point for the Dakshineswar Temple Railway Station and the bus stop.
The convergence of buses, cars, slow moving traffic like rickshaws,
railway commuters and goods vehicles causes massive pile-up at the
rotary.
Anand Sharma studied (B.Arch.) Hons, from IIT,
Kharagpur and started the practice ‘Tevatia Chauhan &
Sharma Architects’ in 1995. In 2003, the practice was
rechristened as Design Forum International (DFI) with a
clear intent to foster an egalitarian organisational ethos
where distinctive architectural talent finds selfexpression.
Sharma is an architect, talented singer and literary
enthusiast. At DFI, he coined the slogan of ‘People first’
and constantly uses his leadership and people skills to mentor and upscale the
creative and intellectual horsepower.
He believes that cities must have a distinct character and as an architect, he lays
great emphasis on including contextuality in design responses. He is an exceptional
team leader possessing the capacity to carry a project from initiation to final
production.
AREAS FOR INTERVENTION
The rotary is the first point of focus for an intervention, followed by
the approach road, Rani Rashmoni Road, the streets leading out of it
and the culmination of the approach road at the temple, at the entry
gates to the temple compound.
Collating key thoughts and ideas for design initialisation, the West
Bengal Government tasked KMDA to create a design brief and
project report to enable floating of tenders leading to ‘Design and
Build’ solutions for resolving the situation. Primary concerns were
segregation of traffic and pedestrian movement, further segregation
of traffic into motorised and non-motorised, ensuring livelihood of
the shop keepers, ease of movement, comfort and safety of the
devotees along with seamless connectivity from point of
disembarkation to the temple gates for the devotees. The resulting
idea therefore aimed to transfer both the pedestrian circulation and
the shops to an elevated concourse, thereby leaving the road level
Architecture Update March 2016 29