Design Inspiration from the Bazaar

This blogpost features a studio for Trumpet by Meister - a Swiss fashion workshop in Cochin, Kerala which takes its design inspiration from the Bazaars. The design combines contemporary sleek finishes for worktops and shelves with fittings and furnishings sourced from local markets.

Stainless steel colanders to strain boiled rice become filigreed lampshades. Hand painted metal trunks are mounted on castors for mobile fabric storage. Porcelain pickle jars of various sizes are reborn as stationery holders. The mix is intended to reflect the nature of the fashion brand and further shape its emerging identity.

As Krishnan, the architect for the studio says “The creative direction for the studio came from the brand itself. Trumpet by Meister gets its inspiration from flea markets and thrift shops to create a mix and match style. Call it clutter chic. Some objects are reused or customised to fit the look. The interior design followed a similar logic of reuse"

The design involved the fit out of a 350 square feet verandah of an old Dutch-style mansion. Due to the historic nature of the building, interventions to the structure were kept minimal. Thus all furniture is movable with the exception of adjustable wall shelves which can be dismantled if need be. The studio is kept sparse with a black and white palette. The restored black oxide floor complements the lime plastered walls. Light airy screens made from disused Kerala saris shield the view from the busy street outside. 

"We looked around the bazaars close to our studio and were overwhelmed by the variety at hand. More choices than if we had walked into the international design furniture studio Ligne Roset. Some of the items we had settled on beforehand, like the trunks - some were a result of hanging around the stainless steel stores we love. The shopkeepers would invariably ask when we turned colanders upside down and held it above our heads. Once in a while we would even get a valuable suggestion on the proposed reuse”

It is really nice to know about this project and thanks to Krishnan for sharing with us his photos and his design ideas!

Designing an Indian Mall

The many new malls that are mushrooming around the country have almost identical architectural facades and layouts. This sameness is in stark constrast to the country itself. In the largest and most diverse gathering of people under a single nation-state in the world, one expects diversity, not uniformity. The challenge is to resurrect what is Indian from the history of shopping environments in this land, and to introduce the familiarity of that experience into the modern retail space.

Our understanding of shopping behaviour of customers in a mall environment will also depend on how Indians have shopped until now in a bazaar environment. How can we design an amenable mall that understands the concept of familiarity that the new Indian shop must be based on and also ensures profit for the Indian entrepreneur?

The STREET Concept for an Indian Mall

The concept design for a mall included here proposes a sheltered environment for a series of smaller mall blocks roofed over together. The new design recommends bringing in the vibrancy of an Indian street into a modern Indian shop that has the efficiency of a “Singapore mall” and yet offers creative freedom to the vendors in the way spaces and displays can alter themselves within the informal central spine that connects the more formal spaces.

This blogpost is a part of an article I wrote recently for an architectural journal. For the full article, refer to  'Indian Architect & Builder' Vol 23 (11), July 2010, Business Press Pvt.Ltd., Mumbai

Bazaars and Indigenous design

Bazaars are a valuable study in indigenous thought that stems from the “education” of the vendor who has learnt intrinsically from his surrounding natural environment and from his “non-education” which understands design to be a collective effort. There is nothing that belongs to a pre-planned aesthetic or to a designer’s style. Space and Place are both seen as an outcome of random forces in nature and man’s individual and collective responses to it.

The YouTube film is by isoguruvinod. Here is a link to their website: www.vinodfilms.com

The vendors who belong to the bazaar adapt to the people who enter and leave the bazaar and to their needs in terms of the spatial configurations and the visual displays they generate as a way of selling better.

In the cities, on the one hand, markets are being built by the Municipal Corporations with better infrastructure but they may lack local flavour and the vigour of the lives of the Indian people. On the other hand, malls are being constructed in small and big cities and retail shopping takes on a new direction.

the Market square

Towns in India had street performers who were very much a part of the market squares. Today, these street performers are not to be seen. Spatial configurations within market areas have changed. Vehicular movement has been a new and bull-dozing modern need. There is so much that cannot happen in the market square because cars and rickshaws must be allowed to move on. We have brought the car into our lives & do not realise fully how we have allowed it to erode our cultural environments.

The Mapusa market in Goa by youshitface

In India, our cities do not anymore have public squares. Markets are mostly crowded, dirty and chaotic streets. A Town or City would need to identify old pedestrian plazas or design new ones around existing markets where cultural programmes and street theatre or puppet shows happen frequently. These could also become areas for tourists to know more about the local people and their arts and crafts.

a way ahead for bazaars

There is a need for interactions with the city administrative authorities to understand their approach to bazaars, the constraints, if any and to attempt to complement their efforts by developing a planning strategy that maximizes the resources available and acknowledges and supports the role vendors can play in the making of bazaars. It is also hoped that bazaars will not become only centers of exchanging merchandise but continue to be centers of social interaction as well.

We have all been at some time or another fascinated by our experience of the bazaar. If each of us begins to think about the bazaar and what we can do for it in our own way, each of these small steps at a different time and a different place will begin to support the evolution of the bazaar. It is possible that we will have in the future, market environments that meet our changing aspirations and still enthrall as did the bazaars of old.

a few questions on Bazaars

How have our needs changed and what kind of market do we want?
How should a one-stop shop be planned to have the character of an Indian bazaar?
Is it possible to make our marketplace also a meeting point for social interaction? Do we want that?
Must the Indian Bazaar continue to be dirty if it is to be a vibrant place? OR Is a shopping mall the only answer to having a clean market environment?
Are there policies that can be introduced in marketplaces that will remove some or all of the negative aspects of the Bazaar? What are these?

Is it possible for one organisation to take over and manage efficiently an entire marketplace in a city?
How to create an awareness amongst the planners & administrators about the aesthetic contributions of the vendor?
How will new commodities and new ways of marketing be reconciled with traditional design?
How to create a changing, dynamic system, how to implement it?
How can design interventions enhance livelihoods in a bazaar?

Planning for the Transition

Today, most towns and cities find it difficult to improve on existing markets because it is difficult to temporarily relocate the market elsewhere. Within the city, there is often no area available to insert a new market. The available option is usually to relocate them to the peripheral areas which are not so well connected by public transport or even if they are, customers find it tedious to travel large distances for their daily shopping. With markets, it is almost impossible to start work at any time and put up a board that says,

“ MARKET CLOSED FOR REPAIR “

This just won’t work. So, how does one solve this practical problem, which is often the reason for municipalities being unable to improve market zones. Strategies need to be worked out in collaboration with the petty traders so that small parts of the market can be redone at a time. This sequential planning can only be executed with the help of people’s involvement in the project.

The Design of Bazaars

Our cities no longer have the character and beauty that Indian towns once had. We need to design differently and design coherently. We need constant support from our local administrative bodies. Infrastructure is often more than drainage system, parking lots and water supply pipes. Planners will find that there are human factors that have often been overlooked. The vendors may like to create their own spatial patterns and such creations may be more appropriate for them as well as for the buyers. These individual inputs put together carefully by the authorities and the public may create environments that are both functional and aesthetically indigenous.

It is important for us to design our markets well, so that they are easy to maintain and to keep clean. The health of the entire town or city may be affected by the hygienic conditions prevalent in our marketplaces since that is where the food supplies enter the city. So, while we may appreciate the traditional elements enmeshed within the changing environment of the markets, we need to also resolve the practical problems faced by vendors and users.

Bazaars - the beginning

How do Bazaars in India grow? A walk through a bazaar in any village, town or city in India would establish the fact that here, art is a way of life. It is not easy to fathom what this way of life is. It is difficult to define it. It is a complex but very thoughtfully developed way that fascinates and enthralls as you understand it better.


“Everything flows. We cannot step twice into the same river. When I step into the river for the second time, neither I nor the river are the same” - Jostein Gaardner

In the market or `bazaar´, there is art and culture evident in the mannerisms of the vendors and the buyers, in the costumes, in the baskets that hold the goods, in the wares that are sold, whether it is flowers or camphor, whether it is rope or white cloth - a sign of the myriad ceremonies that Indian households conduct.

Is it possible for us to study this aesthetic and to recreate it once again for the cities of India. In the urban areas markets are built by the Municipal Corporations with better infrastructure but they sometimes lack local flavour and the vigour of the lives of the Indian people. There is much funding being directed to build markets all over the country. We, in India, have also begun to replicate western concepts of shopping by introducing large store chains. Can a vegetable market in India really go online?

How do urban dwellers perceive bazaars? Are they still places that excite us? Or are we relegating bazaars to be those dirty, unhygienic backyards of our increasingly “modern” cities? Do we look upon them as evils that must be put up with for just a few years more, to be replaced soon with neat supermarkets and multi-level parking places? As our cities and lifestyles “progress” , we lose more and more our indian identity. It is time perhaps to think hard therefore if this is really what we want to see happening. The Indian mind can handle so much complexity that it is not difficult to absorb within our system new ways of thinking that may add efficiency and progress to our lives, while still witholding the customs and cultural traditions that have made us. Let us not believe that we must shed one lifestyle for another.