a Mall for home interiors

The Future group's "Hometown" is a mall for home interiors. It is now already in seven cities including Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Calcutta. The Hometown in Bangalore is in Marathahalli on the outer ring road. This is also where @Home and other furniture and interior showrooms are located. This is meant to be a "one-stop shop" for home interior.

The ground floor has several options for living room furniture. The upper floors offer options for bathrooms & kitchens. There is a 'Design & Services' Centre with four architects, four engineers and two managers, a team that offers interior design solutions to its customers.

There are three packages one can opt for. There is the Turn-key option that includes design and implementation for the interior of the entire apartment or house, where the design fee is Rs.35/sq.ft and the design & execution may be charged at Rs.600 to Rs.1200 per sq.ft. There is the Segmental option, which consists of plan alternatives and ideas for the design of a room at Rs.2999. There is the third Customised option, which may include the design of just a wardrobe for a bedroom.

This mall for home solutions also includes a small exhibition on the various aspects of house building from the foundation stage to the finishing stage. There is information made available on a Mobile Concrete Lab to assess the suitability of materials at site and suggestions for mortar, waterproofing and other mixtures that the construction needs.

How is 'Hometown' different from a Kajaria showroom for bathrooms or a Venetia Cucine showroom for kitchens. It does offer both in one location but does not match up to independent showrooms on its customer service. And, in terms of the services it offers in plumbing, electrical and carpentry, how is 'Hometown' different? The Mr.Plumber, Mr.Carpenter and Mr.Tilewala boards within the mall do look attractive. However, all services are offered within the 'design centre' on the second floor and comprise of an interior design solution or a turnkey interior service.

The social networks of building artisans have been quite strong in towns and cities. It is a system that depends on the 'word of mouth' phenomenon. Will the old system and the new one continue to run parallel to each other?

Read about:
Citi Centre: the Mall in Chennai
Miracle Boutique
Things Indian and Mauritian
Forum Mall at Bangalore

Mauritius bazaars

There are bazaars in Mauritius that are organic in their planning. There are people in Mauritius of Indian, French and African origin. This reflects in its urban selling spaces.

Within the Bazar Rose Hill, as it is called amongst local residents, there are no demarcations between spaces that vendors occupy. It is a shared space. Recently, I had an opportunity to work on the 'Redevelopment of the Bazar Rose Hill' - a project initiated by the Municipal Council of Beau Bassin, a district of Mauritius.


Mauritius Bazar Rose Hill

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Slid Mauritius Bazaar

The market occupies a triangular property surrounded on three sides by busy roads. It is a part of the Central Business District, where the real estate prices are high. This is a situation quite similar to our Indian markets. The city grows denser around a central marketplace. It was suggested that the market be temporarily moved to a part of the Duval stadium nearby and this triangular plot be redesigned as a Shopping cum Tourist complex. We eventually prepared an urban design proposal which permanently relocated the vegetable and fruit market to the stadium periphery and created a "market square" with additional buildings with contemporary shops and cafetarias. The second proposal was the architectural design solution for the original triangular site, with the idea of a place that would attract both tourists and local residents with its craft shops, eating outlets and facilities for business travellers to Mauritius.

In India, as elsewhere, it is always difficult to improve upon an existing market., as observed in one of my previous posts - Planning for the Transition

I walked around the Rose Hill region to study it as much as possible. I found that the character of the Bazar Rose Hill was made more interesting with the innovations in the outlets of the bread vendors. I also visited the Central Market in Port Louis and La Caudan waterfront with its contemporary shopping places .

In Port Louis, the capital city of Mauritius, the “market” is an entire region that consists of several streets that have grown from this nucleus that sells fruits and vegetables and where people congregate to buy their daily necessities.

Today, it is also an interesting area for tourists who can buy crafts, who can see what it is like to be in Mauritian markets and to be a part of the lives of the people here. 

Related Posts:

Street Food in Mauritius

Things Indian, Things Mauritian

Weekly market in Tamil town

The weekly market at Theni takes place every Sunday. Theni is a small town in Tamil Nadu. The concept of a weekly market has existed since a long time in India. In some places, it is held in a village which acts as the focal point for several villages in a region. Sometimes, it is at an important road junction or point where important roads meet, where the weekly market spreads itself on all sides of these roads, with one part being a chilli bazaar, another one a livestock selling yard and another a market selling farm implements with the vegetable market offering a good price on everything from retail to wholesale wares.

The shelters for the weekly market are temporary comprising of plastic sheets for roofing to corrugated metal and bamboo matting. In Theni, unlike in most other places, the shelters are in canvas fabric that has been beautifully stitched at the edges.

Just as vernacular houses in villages and small towns in India are a record of the indigenous building skills, the bazaars within our many small towns also reflect the ingenuity of the artisan who continues to work with his hands and to use natural materials in a cost-effective way. It is important to identify the artisans who make the tents for the weekly market.

Local skills in making these tents can be tapped also for other uses such as tourism camp sites so that there are more opportunities for these artisans to practice their skill and to hone it further for contemporary use.

the "Bakery" in the Indian marketplace

We have in India the "bakery" which sells factory-made bread or the locally made "bun". But, this is only one of the hundred odd items for sale here. It is actually the convenience store.

It is only another version of the kirana shop or the "mom and pop traditional corner stores" as they are being referred to today. Here, you sometimes can buy your dals, cereals, spices and other groceries and sometimes not. The shopfront in this bakery is usually lined with large glass jars that hold home-made nankatais (cookies) and locally made bread.

It sells plastic brushes, plastic bags, plastic tea cups. Today, this bakery is also where you can buy your prepaid cellphone card.

"All those who expect big retailers like Walmart to come in and devour small kirana shops should pause and think. Can Big Retail really do that? Just look at what the average kirana store offers the average Indian household" writes Gaurav Sabnis, in an interesting article linked here : Kirana will still Rule