DEVARAJA
MARKET AND CONSERVATION OF HERITAGE:
B S Bhooshan
DEVARAJA MARKET AND CONSERVATION OF HERITAGE, MYSORE CITY
Dr. B S Bhooshan, Architect and Urban Planner
.
A controversy is raging regarding fitness of the Devaraja Market, Mysore;
to be conserved as a heritage structure or to be demolished as unsafe.
All kinds of opinions have been expressed especially after part of the
structure collapsed during a conservation effort recently. We know that there
are many poorer structures that were conserved elsewhere, but then that
requires careful consideration of rehabilitation of not only the buildings but
also its spaces and removal of overloaded functions. Simple rehabilitation is
of no heritage value and will have limitations of use. Here we consider three aspects
of the issue and some related misconceptions.
·
1. The market as originally built and
its spatial heritage quality as an Indian Bazaar.
·
2 The outer building’s conservation fitness and
·
3 The overloading of the structures and spaces over
the period of more than 100 years.
All these are interconnected questions.
The Market
Devaraja Market was built during the reign of Sri Chamaraja
Wodeyar 1868-94. It is one of those several Market spaces built
around that time in India, in the tradition of Indian Bazaars. It is
similar to Crawford Market in Mumbai, Russell market in Bangaluru or Connemara
Market, Thiruvananthapuram. It is laid out with a two storied facade around and
a series of simple rows of sheds inside, having tiled roof over steel trusses.
Part of the rows were destroyed sometime ago and had been rebuilt in concrete
with flat roof. The market is considered one of the surviving traditional
Indian urban market heritage buildings.. To that extent it has value to be
preserved
The plan, the spaces and the structures built around the bazaar space
have served about 150 years and did it well. Made for a city of about 60,000
people upgrading a weekly open market in 1870 to a daily bazaar, this semi open
market has been over crowded for its function as a main retail market today.
The vegetable as well as the meat and fish markets cannot function as the only
market for the more than a million population of the city. It is also not even a
wholesale market. To be noted is that these functions need not be in the centre
of a large city.
Naturally, the original use of the space and the spatial organisation
that served for as smaller retail place has changed and modified most likely
beyond the original. The heritage value of a retail market is to be assessed as
to the value of the spatial structure and ambience it can project to the future
generation as well as visitors and scholars, showing how it functioned
originally. This actually means museumising the past with some functions
retained to make it financially viable.
The common place shed structures themselves has no heritage value other
than falsified sentiments and to a large extent vested interests of the
stakeholders. Especially so the whole idea of retaining the market and continue
with overloaded functions, as it is.
Only way it can be meaningfully utilised would be to make it of a low
intensity market. The retail fruits / vegetable as well as meat and fish markets
are to be decentralised in many
secondary centres around the city first. A part of the the spatial heritage of
market can be retained for the museum value for touristic purpose. It would
mean that the place cannot be allowed to be used as it is now and then keep on increasing
the intensity of use continuously. The market literally can be moved to other
places as in this location it does not serve the whole city any more. Lack of
secondary vegetable retail markets have created miserable road side vending
conditions in many parts of the city. A project has to be thought of as to
create many markets in different places. This would go a long way in
improving the city’s liveability.
The outer structure
Beyond this, the main contender for the heritage tag is the peripheral
structure. That is the second question. Here again, the original structure seem
to have been severely altered, even mutilated, subdivided and appurtenances
extended in to the street. The heritage value is in its architecture that
largely is an eclectic mixture taking cues from Mogul and other architectural lineages
and using a technology of bricks, lime and Madras terrace of the time. The
structure does not seem to be maintained well either. However, it is possible
to conserve any old structure as a heritage piece, provided it is trimmed of the
current intense function and is carefully structurally rehabilitated.
Conservation should not be confused with rehabilitation of a building for
a continued utility alone. It is to conserve a piece of built heritage for the
cultural and historical value of it. To that extent it has a historical
and technology dimension. It also does not mean only to conserve the building
or part of it alone, but to change its functions and substantially change the
quality of the precinct as well. The spaces around the building and the
roads make up the precinct including the pavements and approaches and to put
them back as it would have existed originally, but not as of now. It
would also mean that removal of guardy neon lights, contemporary hoardings,
signage etc and recreating an ambiance of the past, as much as possible. It
will also include not allowing certain functions other than that would fit inside
a heritage structure. A more relaxed places like coffee houses, restaurants,
book shops, curio and handicraft shops, library etc. In short museumising the
whole place and creating a cultural-recreational-market complex. That would be
largely be pedestrian including certain parts of roads and streets around,
resulting in restraining of vehicular traffic.
It would have to be part of an urban design plan for the centre. The
heritage value of the city would improve, then.
The rebuilding
lobby and compromise formula;
Any structure can be conserved. But its use would depend on many
factors. The heritage value can be retained only by appropriately reducing and
changing the present functional load and intensity of use. This would also ease
structural conservation. However the argument of a compromise formula, as suggested
by some and reported in news papers, to retain the facade and change the inside
to high value commercial mall does scant respect to the idea of conservation
and would do more damage to heritage than good. It would be ridiculing of Mysore city’s heritage
itself. The heritage is not in the facade or outer shape of buildings. It is in
the spirit of the place. It is about retaining the expressive part of building
culture of the time; the techniques, the skills and the meanings derived over
time. If we do not understand the value of it, please don’t attempt to make a
mockery of the heritage. Even the so-called heritage of some of the city’s
buildings is maintained on too flimsy ground. Some identified heritage
buildings do not have any long history or of substantial architectural value of
the time. Many are of less than a century old and has been built to look old
even at that time for political reasons. This is noted in already published
historical research and published books by scholars. However, the retaining of
the past structure is one matter and making false fascia by poorly
copying, often pathetically disproportionate too, of the old features on a
new building is another. It is an anachronism of misunderstanding and of poor
taste and imagination. Is this what the compromise formula suggests? It is as farcical
as arguing that any pizza made and sold in Mysusu should look like MYSOREPAK. That
is after all one of our original product, a real heritage. It is not the look,
please note, that matters in architecture as well in food. It is the content.
The increasing argument for rebuilding is largely stemming from
commercial interest of vested interest, stressing on the high value of the land
in the centre. From the urban design point of view, however, it makes no sense
to furthering the central density without changing the already flimsy
historical character. What is needed is to slowly shift intense retail commercial
activity away from the centre to a secondary ring and remake the historical
centre to a less intensely built, more pedestrian, cultural cum
commercial place with more of open to sky vending spaces which would give
an original character back to the city centre. If we cannot be sure of what we
can do, it is better to leave the place with minimal intervention. Let the
future generation decide.
Pathology of false
heritage mutiplication
In the recent past experiences of
public buildings built in the city is of fairly poor precedence, take the case
pf the ourts, new mini Vidhan Soudha, the
buildings being built in the Northern side of Kukkerehalli Kere, and
many more. They all show poor understanding of value of architecture as
a total integrated art and not just facial convolutions of false arches and
paints over concrete frame structures. They neither pay homage to our real
heritage, nor the soul of the technology of the time. They are just monumental
pretences. Some grossly vulgar too. The arches and decorative plasters are
totally false “paste-on-extras”, aped from the past, a pathetic anachronism at
display.
More pathetic is the replication of canopy structures of KR Circle and
Chamarajendra Circle to many other
junctions around the city. They are disproportionately overpowering on the new
statues, especially so in Vivekananada circle where the statue seems buried and
the Kuvempu statue at a corner park in Kuvempunagar. In one go, we are
insulting the personalities of these statues to stand in inaccessible traffic
islands and also exposing our ignorance of history and built heritage in
mathematically multiplying and aping the architectural forms of past follies.
In fact, the original circles themselves were made only
around the middle of the last century. The architecture of most heritage structures also were clearly, as researchers of history have noticed, were acts of conceit to show the people the city itself was very old and of heritage alue. They were designed to look so.at the instructions of then authorities. We seem to revel in pomposity .
