On Communal Dynamics & Infrastructural Forms

As cities grow and densify, the pressures of urban migration manifest in congested housing, informal settlements, makeshift commerce, and overstretched infrastructure. Life narrows into a binary : workspace or home; leaving little room for anything in between. It is precisely in this context that parks become important city resources. They are the city's third spaces: neither work nor home, but places of rest, recreation, and shared civic life.

Joseph Kaka Baptista Garden sits within a richly diverse urban fabric, surrounded by communities that each engage with the park in their own way. Yet this shared space is not without tension. Layered social, religious, economic, cultural, and class hierarchies shape who uses the park, how, and on whose terms. When one community systematically appropriates spaces meant for all, it quietly excludes and marginalizes others. For a park to truly function as a third space, it must remain open, equitable, and genuinely accessible to every user it serves.

The garden is surrounded by multiple communities and institutions that exist in very close proximity.

Kunchi Kurve settlement wraps around the southern edge of the garden - a dense informal settlement characterized by narrow internal lanes, closely packed housing, and limited internal open space.

The north eastern community is located on the south western edge of the park , the Muslim community at the north east and Buddhist community in some parts of Kunchi Karve and north east.

Each community has distinct social practices and patterns of space use. The garden is surrounded by several key institutions, including a BMC municipal school, St. Mary Immaculate School, and the Our Lady of Egypt church and its convent school.

These institutional edges introduce specific rhythms into the site—school timings, religious gatherings, and community events—which influence how and when the park is used. As a result, the garden functions not only as a recreational space, but also as a shared foreground to multiple religious, educational, and social institutions.

Site readings and Diagrams:

The western edge of the park faces a cluster of schools, generating significant footfall at the start and end of each school day. Vendors, parents, van drivers, and rickshaw pullers animate this edge daily. Field studies revealed that these users share consistent needs: shaded waiting areas, clean drinking water, well-maintained toilets, safe play spaces for children, and a reimagined vachnalaya and meeting spaces within the park.

Design intervention:

The project introduces intermediate pathways that allow users to move through the park and access its central spaces, along with new access points from the western edge.

Along these pathways, a series of pavilions (follies) are introduced, giving people destinations to walk to. These create spaces of encounter and interaction, helping to bring communities together.

These pavilions include:

• a vachnalaya

• a drinking water pavilion with a garden office

• a viewing deck for the BMC turf with an office

• public toilets

• smaller multi-use follies

Form Iterations:

Vachnalaya

The vachnalaya works as an extension of SHED, an NGO working for the development of lower-income groups.

It consists of a series of steps for seating and reading, with bookshelves recessed into them. The walls are MS screens, creating a semi-open space that remains connected to the park while acting as a filter.

Openable window panels double as reading desks. The space is organized around a courtyard with a mango tree, with an upper deck overlooking it and providing additional reading areas.

2. Water Fountain-Garden Office Pavilion

This pavilion opens up a new pathway into the park from the western edge. It acts as a waiting space, with drinking water facilities arranged around a courtyard and a modulated plinth for seating.

The structure grows taller to accommodate a garden office, managed by the BMC along with active community leaders for the parks maintenance.

3. Turf office & viewing deck

The BMC-owned turf is rented out to generate revenue for maintenance. The office supports this function.

A series of steps act as seating for spectators, leading to an upper deck used for smaller events.

4. Toilets

The Public toilets are organized around a courtyard with trees,

integrating them into the park and making them more accessible.

5.Muti-use Pavilions

These pavilions support multiple uses, acting as meeting points and common

spaces.Elements like play nets and climbing walls encourage children’s

physical activity.

Together, these interventions reframe Joseph Kaka Baptista Garden not as a passive green buffer within a dense city, but as an active, inclusive civic infrastructure. The intermediate pathways draw users inward; the pavilions give them reasons to stay. By addressing the everyday needs of the park's most overlooked users — the waiting parent, the school-going child, the migrant worker seeking shade ; the design resists the hierarchies that have long shaped who this space truly belongs to.

A park that works for everyone is not simply a matter of landscaping. It is an act of spatial justice. These pavilions and pathways are modest in scale but deliberate in intent architecture as an invitation for the neighbourhood to reclaim its third space, together.

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