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Design in context to the site: Design of a Mass Rapid Transit System Station in Kasturba Nagar, Chennai

Part 1 Project 2002
Deepak Krishna
Manipal University | India
1.0.INTRODUCTION.

This topic deals with the current state of our cities. In the course of this project I have come across the degradation of our cities and how this project may as well act as a savior for the city and the people living in it. Such project when fully utilized act as pressure relieving points for our cities.

To start off with a metro system is mainly introduced to decongest existing traffic, which exists in our urban areas. This has happened to some extent in cities like kolkota.my main area of study is chennai that has got a rather new metro.some of the main aims of any metro can be summarized as follows:

 Decongestion of traffic.
 Faster movement of commuters as compared to other modes of transport.
 Reduces pollution

2.0 CHENNAI CITY

Chennai city is the capital of tamilnadu has grown from a tiny fishermen’s village of the seventeenth century to become the fourth largest city in India. The recent condition of chennai has a train network operating mainly in the outskirts. The newly built phase one mrts line is part of the loop, which has to be finished in four phases.

The overall evolution of the city has been highlighted in the research report. The report also contains the current situation of the city.an analysis has also been made of the current networking of the city.

3.0 SITE

The station is part of the phase two of the ongoing mrts in chennai. It is located at kasturba nagar.the station site is located on top of an existing canal. This canal is known as the Buckingham canal and the British constructed it for navigational purposes. in the recent past the canal has become more of a sewage which floods up during rainy seasons. due to lack of space in the city itself the canal is being used for the construction of the stations.

The site is surrounded by multi land uses. On one side is the highly commercial area known as adyaar.A heavy residential area, which comprises of middle class and higher middle class crowd.finally on the other side, is the institutional area comprising of colleges With this kind of a land use the station automatically becomes a multi functional area. This is where the definition of the station changes from just being a transportation node to more than that.

The existing track columns run through the site at seven meters interval with two columns placed together five meters apart.this plays avery significant part in determining the structure of the station in turn.

A cluster of hutments.these hutments were resettled else where in the city borders the station and the remaining space became part of the site.

4.0 DESIGN ISSUES

This thesis particularly addresses to an urban level scenario, which requires fitting of a new urban fabric into an existing one. It is therefore important that that the new development blends into the new fabric for a better functioning of the whole system. so it was important that the station fitted into the existing urban fabric in terms of function and network.

For the station to blend in terms of function it was necessary to introduce functions other than transportation which could be used. This brings us to the point of how to arrive at these functional requirements. A study of the surrounding land use was done and using the UDPFI guidelines that states a particular percentage for a specific land use out of an overall situation areas of required land uses were got. This resulted in allotment of specific areas for commercial, social and open area needs in the station. It was important to include these functions so that there is revenue generation for a project of this magnitude. This part of the topic is there in the project report.

For the project to blend in terms of networking appropriate transportation connections were to be made to the main metro so that a commuter has the convenience of being connected to the station from his doorsteps. This will surely result in saving a lot of time. a special bus service was there fore introduced to connect the station to the surrounding areas. There were also transportation connections in terms of auto services. Most importantly pedestrian traffic was encouraged.

Deepak Krishna


This particular project was one that was dealing with the current problems of our urban areas in India. The particular problem being of increase in number of vehicles that directly has resulted in high levels of pollution. In this point of view this project could as well serve a problem solver for such scenarios.

Looking at the scale of the project a lot of initial survey and analysis was done at an urban level. A lot of new methods were employed to arrive at facts and figures. Avery good research of other metro lines and stations around the world and in India was done. An equally exhaustive study was done to find out the problems with the existing metro lines and stations in our country. These problems were rectified in the proposal. Much of this highlighted in the research report. The final product is designed keeping in mind as a landmark for the city as a sign of advancement in architecture and engineering of our country.

2002
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