The Skywalk
ITO Skywalk, New Delhi Design Forum International, New Delhi
The project that is located in New Delhi touches one of the lines of this complex grid of urbanism. By understanding urban density that comes with its complexities to cater to urban infrastructure, it also manifests itself as a tool to address the issues of identity in urban infrastructure and mobility. The junctions cross cater to one of the busiest mobile cross- junctions in the city. The junctions cater to around 25 major offices and institutions in the city including a very robust, wellnetworked public transportation system.
There is a major rush of pedestrian traffic at these junction points all through the day, especially during the peak office hours. Incorporating this in the approach to design for the rapidly burgeoning population density in our city centres, as a major cause of concern, the
architects aimed for solutions that allow our cities to expand and not implode. The lack of land available also being a major constraint in our densely- populated cities, further aids the design strategy.
With the idea of catering to this density on a daily basis in the absence of free- flowing pedestrian walkways, the design intent was to make a Free on Board ( FOB) skywalk, to allocate the mobility flow at the junctions. This would also avoid the haphazard management of the people using the railway tracks to cross Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg.
Thus, the idea of bringing the FOB to the cross junction gives us connecting points to these daily problems of
vehicular and pedestrian mobility ratio, and connecting them with skywalk makes pathways for daily commute between the junctions easier and less chaotic, also allowing for the vehicular traffic to move underneath in a free- flowing manner. By creating a physical configuration towards the mobility infrastructural network to providing commuters with a connectivity of a sustainable alternative network, a better reach is enabled amongst the cross junctions in the busy ITO neighbourhood of the dense metropolis city of New Delhi.