Papadi Talav: Listening to a Lake, Weaving a Community and Layering Spaces

Studio Co-ordinators: Anuj Daga, Anshu Choudhri, Ashley Fialho, Rohit Mujumdar

Advit Kalgutkar, Meet Gala

“Community and Institutions” was the title of our academic module. But in truth, what it demanded of us was far deeper than programmatic understanding. It asked us to listen. Not just to the brief, but to the rhythms of a place. To the stories layered in stone and stall, in still water and shouting vendors. It asked us to enter the chaos of an old lakeside settlement in Vasai not to impose order, but to understand the unspoken logic that had held it together for generations.

Papdi Talav, a lake both central and overlooked. Though still and silent, its edges were alive with movement. It was a place where commerce and faith, leisure and survival, tradition and transition intersected in tangled, unapologetic ways.

Vendors spilled onto footpaths to create markets. ISKCON monks shared borders with Ganpati devotees. Party workers gathered beneath saffron flags. A jogging track curved neatly around one side, an almost comic contrast to the meat and vegetable market that bustled at another edge. Rickshaw stands, a wood workshop, a crumbling godown-turned-shelter, eateries, bungalows, and a school stitched the site together in an unruly patchwork. It had to be read, like a dense novel with no single protagonist.

So, we stepped back.

We listened.

We observed.

We traced.

Layer by layer, we mapped its atmosphere and sense on tracing sheets and mental models. Pedestrian pathways, sightlines, patterns of use and avoidance, emotional currents. From this emerged three primary axes, not as imposed geometries, but as alignments where frictions and harmonies naturally collided between ritual and routine, permanence and informality, devotion and commerce. And then came the moment of quiet revelation:

Despite being the emotional and environmental heart of the site, the lake was a backdrop. Beautiful but peripheral. The market turned its back on it. The temples ignored it. Homes walled it. It was revered, yet forgotten. We knew then that our intervention had to reorient the site-not just physically, but emotionally-toward the lake.

We proposed a cascading two-story structure that would curve along the lake’s edge, hugging it rather than occupying it. This wasn't architecture as object. It was architecture as companion-a form shaped not to dominate but to hold space gently, to offer shelter below and invite movement above.

The top layer sloped down toward the lake, acting as a green roof and jogging path, a seamless landscape that invited people to walk along the water’s edge. Below it, nestled a meter into the ground, we placed the meat and vegetable market. This sunken design provided natural cooling and ventilation through carefully cut openings in the slab above where shafts of light poured in, catching the dust and the day.

The structure did not stretch as one long block. It broke intentionally, allowing courtyards to emerge-pockets of pause, sky, and breath. The experience moved from compressed sunken pathways into open terraces, echoing the spatial narrative of constraint opening into release.

These cascading terraces formed interconnected zones: markets, vendor rest areas, a relocated Shiv Sena office, a library, and spaces for religious gatherings-all layered yet flowing. The Ganpati Mandir was subtly integrated within this system, continuing its sacred role while becoming part of a larger shared fabric.

Above, the upper levels held storage spaces, community halls, and recreational areas, ensuring that the built environment didn’t merely serve commerce, but cultivated belonging and interaction.

Within this one sweeping design, we integrated many elements:

- The vegetable and meat market,

- Vendor rest zones,

- The Shiv Sena office,

- A community hall,

- A library,

- Spaces for religious gatherings, allowing the Ganpati Mandir to fit seamlessly into this living system.

The morphology of the design followed the natural terrain, merging built form with open space. This redefined the market’s edge as a porous interface-not a wall, but a filter, a space of interaction rather than separation.

The lake became central-not just visually, but functionally. By breaking down hard boundaries and rethinking movement, we integrated it into the community’s daily life and cultural fabric.

We extended this philosophy across the site:

The ISKCON temple opened parts of its private compound to public engagement.

The homeless shelter found new dignity through architectural clarity and integration.

The distant school was reconnected to the lake through green corridors and safe walkways, turning its back door into a threshold.

What emerged was not a singular architectural statement but a syntax-a grammar of courtyards, thresholds, voids, and views that balanced active and passive zones, stillness and movement, architecture and nature. The lake, once merely scenery, became the organizing principle.

This project was never about inventing something new, but about revealing what was always there-in the rhythms of the street vendors, the footprints of barefoot children, the sound of temple bells drifting over the water.

What We Learned

In the end, Papadi Talav taught us that sometimes, the boldest architecture is not one that speaks the loudest, but one that listens the deepest. That design can be an act of empathy-not just with people, but with land, history, and lived rhythms.

We did not seek to impose form on this community. We sought to understand it, to learn its pulse.

And in doing so, we built something not to overwrite the story, but to hold it in place-gently, and with care.