Waiting, Indian Standard Time

“5 minute mein aa rha hoon”

“Bahar hi khada hoon na madam”

“Kidhar? Idhar. Arey idhar kidhar?”

The shopping mall exit, the college entry, the metro gate, even the threshold of our own house; We have all been there – lurking, hovering, looking at our phones, looking at the sky, browsing through the informal vendor products, pretending to text, pretending to find keys in our bags, calling people just because, walking, stopping, eating, throwing, picking, anything that avoids eye contact – “WAITING”.

From the city “that never sleeps” to the city “that is always performing”, every urban fragment assumes that its inhabitants will always keep moving, which is why they don’t design for pauses. A simple, very human act of waiting feels transactional and uncomfortable because if you’re not constantly moving with the crowd, suddenly, you don’t belong.

A city can design a metro system worth billions yet still forget to design for the people waiting outside it. The planners, architects, and authorities are perfectly capable of designing the metro station and the road running outside it. What they forgot to design was the in-between space – the space where maximum human activity and urban change happen. We have never really given due importance to this space – this one metre stretch where every piece of urban furniture, from broken bollards and uprooted pavement, becomes seating or an armrest and where every last chaiwalla earns their wage.

There is also a very beautiful way the human fabric wraps around this space that hasn’t been designed for. We occupy nooks, niches, and crannies with our faces inwards, we lean slightly against the wall, we put one foot on accidental ledges, or if nothing else, we pet a stray dog. Designing a city is not a monumental master plan; it is the very act of living, realizing, and designing spaces for the most mundane human experiences.

Project Epilogue finds its scope in the in-between. One design ended at the gate, and the next one began with the road; ours exists in the space left in the middle. Not a redesign, not a new space. Just a shift – an edge to gather your thoughts standing on, so that the Uber wala coming is not the respite you constantly seek.

The Millennium City Centre metro station has a daily footfall of approximately 70,000 to 1,00,000, including corporate office-goers, daily wagers, students, etc. This site has a general identity of being a “compression chamber” rather than a mere metro stop. Project Epilogue aims to rewrite the urban narrative of city planning by positioning the experience of waiting on the same pedestal as that of arrival or departure. We have focused on minimal urban interventions that make the already claimed waiting stretch feel more planned and less awkward. Let’s make waiting. Let’s make waiting feel accounted for.