Project : MAHATMA PHULE MANDAI, PUNE

Cost: 0.82 Cr.

Work: Historical Conservation ,Structural Repair & Restoration Work.

Work Duration: 2014-15

Project Done Company:Archaic Conservation Cell India Pvt Ltd

MAHATMA PHULE MANDAI, PUNE

Mahatma Phule Mandai is the biggest retail vegetable market in the city of Pune, India.The market is housed in an iconic building from the British colonial era in the Shukrwar Peth locality in the center of the city. The Mahatma Phule Market, Pune was concived and built as a perishable goods market.

Mahatma Phule Mandai Complex, also known as Mandai Market and formerly known as Lord Reay Market is Pune's biggest vegetable market and a site of major commercial activity. Located in Shukrawar Peth, the market can be accessed from eight sides, and the main entrance is from the road connecting Shanipar to Chhatrapati Shivaji Road. The market was earlier located in Shaniwar Wada, and its shift to the current location was met with vehement opposition.

Architecture :

The market is designed in the Gothic style, and composed of rusticated coursed masonry carved from the local grey trap. Quoins are smooth ashlar, and other details such as coping, voussoirs, string courses, cornices and finials are carved from a white stone.The structure is dominated by a central squat, 80-feet tall octagonal tower. Each side of the octagonal drum of the tower is pieced by a lancet window of two lights and plate tracery and each window is surmounted by a hood mould that meets a narrower string course that runs around the circumference of the tower at the level of the imposts of the gothic window arches. Above the crown of each hood mould is a small white medallion. The crown also breaks the Ionic -style white cornice of the tower. Every window is provided with a gable formed by the continuance of the upper fillet of the Ionic cornice as the raking cornice of the gable.The tower is surrounded by a verandah with a tiled lean-to roof. This covers the ground and first storeys, with the floor of the first storey verandah being supported by iron rafters and iron pillars with diminutive Corinthian capitals. Four market wings housing the majority of the stalls radiate out from the ground floor verandah, their pitched roofs obscuring part of the upper verandah.