Rejuvenating Intercity Connectivity

Project: Comprehensive Architectural and Engineering services for development of 4 Railway Stations at Naya Raipur, Chattisgarh

The state of Chhattisgarh is undergoing an urban facelift, the focus of which is the proposed Smart City of Naya Raipur. Following the attention that the Prime Minister’s initiative of India’s 100 smart cities is receiving, we believe that the idea of a smart city should be one of livability, sustainability, highest quality of life and economic viability. The design of the railway stations at Naya Raipur is just one small piece of the ‘smart city’ crossword.

Amongst the many global firms, Creative Group was the sole Indian firm to have participated and won the Global Design Competition for the proposed stations. Owing to the experience of the firm in designing several metro stations at Chennai and various intermodal hubs in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, the emphasis in this project was on creating simple, yet visually appealing and easy to construct stations, modulated with steel framing.

The project includes the design of four new stations, with the Naya Raipur station being the central hub, providing effortless intra-city and intercity connectivity, and bringing people from Raipur and Naya Raipur together, whereas the other three will be suburban stations. Spread over an area of 40 acres, the Naya Raipur Station is slated to have multiple platforms. A similar thought process has been applied to the rest of the stations as well, in terms of design and structure.

Site Planning

An understanding of the site-directed the designers towards providing an arterial road— for entering the station and to avoid any traffic congestion on the main road that holds the existing BRT system. The drop off and parking facilities have been provided on the west side. Through this, it was possible to achieve direct connectivity between the BRT and the railway station through a foot-over bridge, which is differently-abled friendly.