Urban Design Framework for the Devaraja Market Precinct, Mysuru

This M.Arch urban-design thesis works on the Devaraja Market precinct in central Mysuru — the arcaded, two-storeyed market blocks and the streets around them, together with the Lansdowne Building on the adjacent Devaraj Urs Road. After roughly six years of litigation about their unsafe condition, the Supreme Court directed in 2026 that both buildings be renovated and restored rather than demolished, asking the city to prepare a comprehensive restoration plan consistent with a structural evaluation by IIT Roorkee and the recommendations of INTACH. The building question has therefore been answered; the precinct question has not. How the restored market connects to its streets, where loading and parking go, and how hundreds of shopkeepers and vendors keep trading through the works remain open urban-design problems.

The thesis frames the precinct as a living heritage landscape in the sense of the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape approach: layered, continuously used, and managed rather than frozen. Work proceeds in three movements. First, a QGIS base map and survey campaign: land use, shop and vending census, building-use register, counts and behavioural mapping of the four bounding streets. Second, a diagnosis that aligns conservation principles with daily operations — servicing, waste, drainage, crowding, mezzanine removal and trade continuity during phased restoration. Third, an urban-design framework and detailed design: entrance plazas, an organised service and loading strategy, pedestrian-priority internal streets, shaded vending zones and interpretation of the market's history. Deliverables — framework sheets, measured drawings, sections, models and guidelines — are defended before an external jury.

Mysuru has decided to restore Devaraja Market and the Lansdowne Building, but a restored building inside an unreformed precinct will fail both tests: conservation and commerce. The four streets around the market carry mixed wholesale and retail traffic with no loading windows, so goods vehicles block the arcades; parking consumes the edges; street vendors, who are part of the market's economy, have no designed space and are periodically evicted; waste collection and drainage are undersized for the volumes the market generates; and later alterations, notably mezzanine floors and closed arches, must be removed as part of restoration, which changes how shops occupy the building. None of these is a structural problem — they are urban-design problems of movement, space allocation and management that a restoration plan alone does not answer. The thesis asks: how should the Devaraja Market precinct be designed — its streets, edges, vending spaces, servicing and public realm — so that the court-directed restoration of the two buildings results in a working, inclusive and legible market precinct rather than a cleaned-up monument around a congested street?

Abstract

This thesis prepares an urban-design framework for the Devaraja Market precinct in Mysuru at the moment its two heritage buildings — Devaraja Market and the Lansdowne Building — move from a demolition controversy to a court-directed restoration. Using the Historic Urban Landscape approach, it maps and surveys the precinct, diagnoses the conflicts between conservation and everyday trade, and proposes a framework and detailed designs that let restoration, commerce and public life reinforce each other.

Introduction

Devaraja Market is among south India's best-known living markets: about 135 years old, built as arcaded brick-and-timber blocks around internal lanes, with hundreds of enclosed shops and open vending spaces selling flowers, fruits, spices and household goods. It sits inside the traditional core of Mysuru, within walking distance of the palace axis along Sayyaji Rao Road. The precinct is simultaneously a heritage monument, a wholesale-and-retail workplace, a transit node for the old city and a tourist destination. These roles collide daily: goods vehicles, autos and two-wheelers crowd the entrances, waste and drainage strain the lanes, later additions such as mezzanine floors have altered the historic fabric, and street vending spills into the carriageway.

Literature review and gap

The Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation (UNESCO, 2011) supplies the method of reading a historic area as layered and continuing, not as a set of monuments. Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl supply the argument that dense, mixed, fine-grained street life is itself primary urban capital, and William Whyte supplies the observation methods. Indian scholarship on bazaars and market conservation documents individual cases, and the INTACH charter for unprotected heritage applies to exactly this class of building. Gap: published material on Devaraja Market is dominated by the structural and legal controversy; almost none converts the restoration decision into a precinct-scale design framework that treats trade continuity, servicing and public space as part of conservation. This thesis addresses that gap.

Existing condition vs proposed approach

• Existing: restoration is framed building-by-building; the four bounding streets carry unmanaged loading, parking and through traffic; vendors work without designed space; visitors find no orientation or facilities; works risk disrupting livelihoods.
• Proposed: a precinct framework prepared in step with the restoration plan — pedestrian-priority internal and bounding streets with time-regulated loading, designed and allotted vending zones under the Street Vendors Act framework, entrance plazas that organise flows, services and waste points sited off the historic blocks, and interpretation that lets heritage value support trade.

Feasibility

• Technical: all mapping uses open data (OpenStreetMap, Bhuvan imagery) plus the student's own measured drawings and surveys; tools are QGIS, AutoCAD and SketchUp.
• Institutional: the Supreme Court has required a restoration plan; a precinct framework is a timely, citable contribution to that exercise.
• Social: traders' associations, the town vending committee and the market's daily users are accessible informants; the design keeps every existing livelihood in place.

In scope

• The market precinct: Devaraja Market, the Lansdowne Building frontage and the four bounding streets, with a context study of the traditional core.
• Urban-design framework: movement, loading and servicing, vending, public space, built-form and shopfront guidelines, heritage interpretation.
• Detailed design of one entrance plaza and one internal market street, including interfaces with the restored structure (arches, mezzanine removal, service points).
• Management guidelines (loading windows, waste, vendor allotment process).

Out of scope

• Structural analysis and the restoration detailing of the two buildings themselves (IIT Roorkee's evaluation and the appointed conservators' mandate).
• Redesign of individual shop interiors beyond the shopfront line.
• Traffic micro-simulation; movement is studied through counts, observation and design standards.
• Land-value or rent modelling beyond a qualitative discussion.

The thesis runs over two semesters as research-by-design, sequenced so that field evidence precedes every design move.

Methods: document and policy review; GIS mapping; architectural measured drawing; structured observation (counts, behaviour maps); vending census; semi-structured interviews with consent and no personal identifiers; comparative precedents; option testing against the brief. All quantities reported in the report are the student's own field values, with survey formats annexed.

The flowchart below is the study design as it appears in the report.

flowchart TD
  A["Supreme Court restoration direction (2026)"] --> B["Conservation principles and brief"]
  C["HUL and public-life literature"] --> B
  D["QGIS precinct base map"] --> E["Land use, building use, streets, plots"]
  F["Measured drawings of market bays"] --> G["Fabric and alterations register"]
  E --> H["Diagnosis: conflicts and opportunities"]
  G --> H
  I["Surveys: vending census, counts, behaviour maps, interviews"] --> H
  B --> H
  H --> J{"Trade continuity and conservation both satisfied?"}
  J -->|No| K["Revise framework options"]
  K --> J
  J -->|Yes| L["Urban-design framework: movement, servicing, vending, public space"]
  L --> M["Detailed design: entrance plaza + internal market street"]
  M --> N["Guidelines, drawings, models, report for jury"]

Historic Urban Landscape layers

The QGIS atlas is organised as HUL-style layers so that each design decision can be traced to evidence: (1) natural and built geometry — streets, plots, footprints, heights; (2) occupancy — shops, open vending, storage, residences; (3) movement — pedestrian volumes by hour, loading points, service routes; (4) heritage value — original fabric, later alterations, views and entrances; (5) management — waste points, drainage, electricity, water.

Design principles

Keep trade running (phased works, every vendor allotted space) · Separate goods from people (loading windows, service lane) · Return edges to pedestrians (arcade continuity, crossings, shade) · Design for the everyday first (buying flowers beats heritage strolls) · Make history legible (entrances, arches, interpretation) · Manage, don't just build (windows for loading, rotas for waste).

• Work with the corporation on a phasing and management plan so the framework can be implemented alongside the restoration programme.
• Pilot PM SVANidhi-linked vendor facilities — designed kiosks, storage and credit access — in one market street.
• Extend the framework into a heritage walk and interpretation route linking market, Lansdowne Building and the palace axis, with festival-day management.
• Study waste and drainage flows of the market in detail with the health wing and design the service corridor accordingly.
• Track trade and footfall before and after the restoration works to measure the framework's effect.