INTRODUCTION

A city is a place of people and, more important, of places for people. A

large part of the current interest in Urban Design springs in the first
place from a critique of contemporary architecture and city planning. The
search is on for alternative models to be adopted. Wide range of theories
and competitions, like Rome lnterrotta have thrown up an immensely rich
spectrum of ideas about the future of the city, far more imaginative and
appealing than huge projects actually built.

In human terms however, Urban Design should perhaps be an attempt to

satisfy the needs and aspirations of any urban community. Mangalore, a
city on the West Coast of India has in its urge for rapid urbanization
overlooked certain cultural and recreational needs of the people. There is
felt a need for spaces where people can experience comfort, freedom,
identity and a sense of 'place'.

The port area of Mangalore is today a picture of neglect. It has a great

potential to be developed as an urban recreational space. This potential
should be exploited and used to the maximum. A very important step
towards achieving this goal of creating these 'places' in a city is the need
to inculcate awareness among its citizens and it's leaders. How
unfortunate is Mangalore that has no public access to its waters - the two
rivers and the sea.

Bunder area of Mangalore, which was once the commercial port of the
city, is today in the process of decay and congestion. The site is the old
port and its offices that are underused, abandoned local government
buildings and godowns that are used today to store goods. Another
important factor is the proximity of the site to tile central open space of
the city - The Nehru Maidan, which is the most significant and the most
strategic void within the dry.

What we experience today is an area whose history is lost, a river edge

without a tradition and an edge that is physically and socially cut-off
from the rest of the dry. The development plan for the area designates
the land use of the area as green open space. The riverside can no longer
be a literary creation describing the area which does not exist in reality
except on a street sign and therefore has no meaning to the visitor.

The scope of the thesis includes the development of the river edge taking
into account underused and abandoned buildings and, structuring of the
connection between the river edge and the maidan. The intention is to
revitalize the decaying Bunder area.

THE CITY

Mangalore, otherwise locally known as Kodial Bunder is the headquarter

of the South Kanara District and is situated in the backwaters formed by
the convergent mouths of Netravathi and Gurpur rivers; consequently it
has waters on the south arid west sides. The Netravathi and the Gurpur
rivers are navigable for some distance from their mouths.

EVOLUTION

The lack of indigenous recorded material is mitigated by the detailed

travel accounts of lbn Batuta and other travelers. Though little
information exists on the settlement pattern or the situation of trade
prior to Ibn Batuta's visit in 1342, there are other remarks and
archeological evidences regarding establishment of Hindu settlements
and mosques by Arab missionaries along the Malabar Coast. The
settlements were scattered because the occupation of the people was
mainly agrarian in nature. These small settlements finally grew into the
city. The area around the Car Street, which was the ceremonial route for
the car of Venkatraramana Temple, was the first major settlement. Two
major castes of the Hindu society, the Saraswath Brahmans and the
Bunts controlled the agrarian economy but had little direct involvement
with commerce.

The trade township of Bunder sprang up not too far away from this
Temple and its residents were mainly the trading Arabs and Moplahs, a
Muslim community resulting from the intermarriage of Arabs and the
locals. Mangalore's existence as a trading centre implied a certain degree
of economic independence between various otherwise culturally
autonomous communities. It was a condition that inevitably encouraged
processes of acculturation to take place.

The arrival of Vasco-da-Gama in the same year as the trade route to India
was discovered saw the history of the whole country taking a mighty
turn. In 1526, the Portuguese took over Mangalore. In 1625 the Arabs
burnt their part of the town in retaliation to the restrictions imposed on
their trade. The Nayakas of Bidanur finally expelled the Portuguese in the
early eighteenth century. In 1763 Hyder Ali took over and soon lost it to
the English who finally took over the administration after the fall of
Srirangapatna in 1799. Mangalore became a part of Madras Presidency
and after independence, a district headquarter of the South Kanara
district of Karnataka State.

CLIMATE

LOGIC OF SITING

The settlement of the maritime traders and the one around The
Venkataramana Temple are the oldest in the city. Small agrarian hamlets
expanded and overlapped giving the city a multi-centered character. The
street structure is largely influenced by the topography, being laid out
with least slopes.

NATURE OF THE SETTLEMENT

The city took its roots in the flattest area of the terrain. Another
important factor for the port to develop was the mouth of the two rivers
that secured the port and also protected it from the waves of the sea.
The city is densest in the flatter region. Religious institutions that were
later established enhanced the molecular quality of the city.

THE SITE

Bunder is the densest and the most congested area of the city being the
worst hit victim of the decision to shift the commercial port northwards
to New Mangalore Port. Establishments directly and indirectly involved
with the shipping industry shifted out leaving behind commercial spaces
for godowns, junk yards, spare parts dealers and motor repair shops.
Though other wholesale markets exist, the availability of godowns at
cheaper rent has made this area an informal wholesale market. Truck
traffic, resulting from this, is the main reason for the congestion.
INTERVENTION
The riverside area of Mangalore is designated as the place for the civic institutions,
cultural in nature. The proximity of the site to the city centre and its major open space,
the lack of institutions proposed and the nature of the site itself has led to its naming,
rather ambitiously, in this Urban Design Project as the 'Cultural Forum'

Understanding the complexities of the public realm led to various schemes pertaining to
underutilized open spaces and buildings. Earlier suggestions taken during the design
process included glorification of the open space itself, whether or not through physical
designs. One could make them more vital to serve more than one function. The main
issue dealt with here was to reuse this lost space; to reunite the public and its water
bodies.

If one wants to look at what came from vastly different lobbies not only negatively but
as a representation of a positive creative process, one can best describe this area as a
dialectical urban field, a field of culture on which thesis and antithesis are set in
opposition to each other. To put this assessment negatively, one could also say that here
in the surroundings of Bunder, the so called 'Cultural Forum' at the edge of the river, an
area has been created where one building simply stands next to another making room
for vistas generously inserted between them.

What remains to be done, now that the main things have already happened? It remains
to supplement, to complete and, above all, to realize visible spatial orders in a relatively
unordered chaos. The restlessness of forms, spaces and buildings can only be met with
restraint and the clarity and simplicity of architectonic forms.

The river edge can no longer be just a literary creation describing an area which does
not exist in reality except on a street sign and therefore has no meaning for the visitor
A place should allow for physical experience. This is the characteristic that distinguishes
the urban space from a village green; the urban space is clear, bordered, readable,
distinct and strictly geometrical, either apparent or inherent, whereas the village green
has fluid contours and is simply an enlargement of a space which cannot be defined.
This was one of the reasons to reject the proposal of the Mangalore Urban Development
Authority, for whom a green space is just a matter of statistics pertaining to the
'percentage of open spaces'.

What else can be meant by a Cultural Forum? Certainly not uniformity, a horrible
attempt to make everything alike. The city, and especially the forum of the city, unlike
the village lives from contradictions and not from uniformity.

A new redefinition extends to our infrastructure itself. Institutions are proposed along
the river, the promenade piercing through them compliment in their function to the ones
across the road at the same time contradicting them in their nature and form, The
commercial edge proposed along the eastern edge responds to the city and pays for the
project.

Urbanity represented through the variety of contradictions and dialectical differences

should determine the area. Resentments do not help. The respect for the area's history,
missing for so long now demands a break from uniformity and the narrow, one sided
interpretations of objects and forms.

The opportunity has arisen to seek an alternative, not out of protest and polemicism but
out of the respect for the new and the latest history of the area.