Contemporary Indian bazaar, Patna

Abstract

The traditional markets have played a significant role in the development of historic cities in India; they were developed through time in response to socioeconomic and cultural needs of the society. But market forms such as shopping malls and department stores have been cloned endlessly in both rural and urban areas in many countries as a successful retail model. Therefore, the more traditional public markets that were once an expression the local life and culture are now being replacing by the “McDonaldized” (Rizter, 2006 page 123) marketplaces. They all have a similar architectural form, type and style that have little or no linkage to the locale and, in addition, are private zones. The intensity of construction of such generic market places has been slowly overriding the authentic identity of market architecture in many regions. In order to distinguish and express the unique architectural developments and the difference in local lifestyles of different regions, it is important to maintain local identity of building that houses “historically stable programs” (Leong, 2011, p. 138) such as local market. It is also crucial to keep the marketplace public in nature where people can socialize with greater freedom.(The Return to Traditional Marketplace, Winnie Lam Ho-Suen, Ryerson University) The complexities of the functions of these markets can be deciphered and read into various layers of urban design realm. These attributes work in cohesion in order to form a complex fabric of socio-cultural-economic space called market which is full of all sorts of activities, linkages, open public spaces, junctions, sensory elements, enclosures etc. which in turn lures and holds the users, and has always have, with the due course of time. This thesis aims at studying the relation of various attributes of our bazaars with the viability of various scenarios in a specific urban marketplace, ensuring to provide an optimum shopping experience and multitude of other user requirements at the same time. The deciphered architectural and spatial elements of our local commercial spaces both at macro (neighborhood level) and micro (deep down in the street fabric) are analyzed and then applied to design and come up with a language of contemporary iteration of our bazaars.