Projects — Urban/Public — Hawker Zones - Pan Navi Mumbai

Client - NAVI MUMBAI MUNICIPAL CORPORATION

In accordance with the positive development that NMMC has initiated and come up with the hawkers’ policy to rehabilitate them in a systematic manner, otherwise scattered across the city; the first such facility to house hawkers as built by the Corporation, at Sector 40, Koparkhairne is designed by THE FIRM.

The roughly 1100 sq mt site has been efficiently designed to incorporate 95 hawkers along with the ancillary requirements of wet areas including a dedicated wash area for the perishables. Care has been taken to ensure universal access by providing access ramps, thereby upholding the principles of barrier-free design.

The maintenance of any public space is a social concern and the architects have tried to keep the clean lines in interiors to facilitate the upkeep of the facility. The whole space is equipped to be wet-cleaned. The design incorporates all the openness and vibrancy of an outdoor street market with the comfort and compactness of a closed mall.

Using a palette of industrial elements and materials, a functional solution has been created which has beauty in the simplicity of its design and efficiency of its working.

The roof of the building has been designed with the multi-layered seamless aluminum-finish metal roofing that is lightweight and highly insulative which gives it excellent sustainability credentials. The skylight and turbo ventilator in the roof provide for natural light and ventilation respectively. The architects have planned that stack effect should keep the interior temperatures lower than the outside and there would be no dependence on artificial light during daytime. Jaalis along the elevation provide natural ventilation, bringing in all the advantages of an open-air market.

The unloading ramp and the dedicated parking bays for these vehicles are provided so that they do not disrupt the main road vehicular movement. In plan the building follows a simple layout, with separate zones for fish and vegetables, including separate unloading ramp access that accounts for cultural and lifestyle sensitivities.

More number of such hawker zones is already in the process of getting built by NMMC at various other locations in the city and the architects look forward to see the prototype design they designed evolve with each facility being occupied and perform functionally. In line with THE FIRM’s design philosophy that Architecture is essentially the users’ response and their emotional content towards the spaces created; the architects believe that the public facility design offers a great opportunity to learn. The design attempts to redefine the building typology and it is aspired that the time would foster the design with adaptation by end users. The architects hope that the facility located in the bustling residential area of Kopakhairane is an irreplaceable addition to the public realm.