Parasite: Adaptive Reuse Architecture Transforms an Abandoned Kolkata Flyover into Public Space

Parasite answers this question through an ambitious work of adaptive reuse architecture in Jorabagan, Kolkata. Instead of treating an abandoned and incomplete flyover as an urban failure to be demolished or ignored, the proposal reimagines it as the structural host for a new layer of public life.

Designed by Iftiker Alom, Rohan Samanta, Sreetama Pal, and Snehasish Mahata, the project transforms an unused elevated structure into a linear recreational and cultural environment. Repetitive modular interventions are attached to the existing flyover, creating places to sit, rest, meet, play, walk, and gather above the intense movement of the street.

The architectural strategy begins with a direct reading of the site. Jorabagan is represented in the project as a dense wholesale district closely connected to the adjoining Burrabazar area. Buildings stand compactly beside one another, pedestrian movement is intense, commercial activity dominates the street edge, and open public space is severely limited.

Within this setting, Parasite proposes a provocative inversion. The unfinished flyover, previously regarded as a source of inconvenience, becomes the very structure capable of addressing the area’s shortage of breathing space.

This is the central strength of the project. It does not search for an empty site. It works with what is already there.

Shortlisted entry of Parasitic Architecture 2020

A Dense Urban Context in Jorabagan, Kolkata

The project is located along Kali Krishna Tagore Street in Jorabagan, where the design team identifies a complex overlap of commercial, residential, pedestrian, and vehicular activity.

According to the project brief, the area is defined by a highly compact urban grain. Wholesale trading activities attract shoppers and businesspeople, local residents share the same limited street environment, commuters move through the corridor toward major transport connections, and cart pullers and goods delivery vehicles contribute another layer of circulation.

The result is a street carrying far more than simple movement.

It operates simultaneously as a commercial corridor, logistical route, neighborhood address, pedestrian passage, and everyday social environment. Yet the project identifies a critical absence within this intensity: there is almost no accessible open space where people can pause without obstructing circulation or competing with commercial activity.

The architectural drawings reinforce this condition clearly. The first board presents the flyover as a long linear element cutting through a tightly packed field of buildings. In the aerial visualization, the structure becomes immediately legible because of its scale and continuity. It occupies a major spatial corridor through the neighborhood, yet remains disconnected from meaningful public use.

For the designers, that contradiction becomes the starting point.

The Problem: A Neighborhood Without Breathing Space

The project frames congestion not simply as a traffic issue but as a spatial and social problem.

The narrow street must accommodate large volumes of people and vehicles, but the surrounding built fabric provides little opportunity for conventional public space. Creating a new plaza at ground level would require land that the neighborhood does not appear to have available.

The proposal therefore asks a critical architectural question:

Could the unused flyover itself become the missing public ground?

This shift in perspective is fundamental to the project’s adaptive reuse architecture strategy. The structure is no longer understood only according to its failed transportation function. It is reconsidered as an existing spatial resource with dimensions, elevation, continuity, and structural presence that can support another form of occupation.

Rather than adding further pressure to street level, the design relocates leisure and community activity onto an elevated plane.

The abandoned infrastructure becomes a new urban datum.

The Flyover as Host

The project deliberately uses the language of host and parasite.

The incomplete flyover is the host. It already exists, already occupies space, and already has a powerful relationship with the surrounding buildings. Yet it has lost its intended function.

The architectural intervention is the parasite.

Instead of replacing the host, the parasite attaches itself to it. It introduces new activity while depending on the existing structure for location, continuity, and spatial identity. This creates a reciprocal relationship. The parasite gains a platform, while the host gains a new purpose.

The designers summarize this condition through a simple but powerful idea: the host has caused difficulties because of its construction and abandonment, but the parasite helps make it variable and usable for the public.

This approach gives the project conceptual clarity. The intervention is not conceived as a conventional building placed on an empty plot. It is an inhabitable system that operates through attachment, repetition, adaptation, and reuse.

Transforming an Urban Liability into Civic Infrastructure

One of the most compelling aspects of Parasite is the way it reframes a problematic structure as civic infrastructure.

The flyover is described as incomplete and unused, yet still physically dominant within the neighborhood. Its presence has spatial consequences. It occupies a substantial corridor and passes close to surrounding buildings.

Instead of treating these characteristics only as constraints, the project turns them into design opportunities.

Its width supports pedestrian occupation. Its elevation separates recreational activity from the most congested parts of street traffic. Its linearity creates a continuous public route. Its proximity to adjacent buildings creates opportunities for access connections.

Through adaptive reuse architecture, the abandoned structure becomes a platform for:

• informal seating
• neighborhood interaction
• children’s play
• pedestrian movement
• small cultural events
• local gatherings
• rest and observation
• flexible community activity

The result is not a single-purpose park. It is a layered public environment designed to support different users and changing patterns of occupation.

Repetitive Modules as the Architectural Parasite

The visual identity of the proposal emerges from a series of modular units positioned along both sides of the flyover.

These modules are composed from cubes and other basic three-dimensional geometric forms. The design boards show them assembled in an almost block-like manner, creating a flexible landscape of seats, platforms, steps, walls, play elements, and social pockets.

The modules are placed at irregular intervals rather than forming one continuous enclosed object. This is important because it preserves the linear movement of the flyover while introducing moments of pause and occupation.

The project imagines different configurations for different users.

Some areas provide common sitting spaces.

Others create high-restriction elements for children’s play.

Some modules become stair-like forms.

Others develop into slides and playground components.

This modular vocabulary allows a limited set of geometric elements to generate multiple public functions. The same basic architectural system can support sitting, climbing, resting, gathering, observing, and playing.

The result is a participatory landscape rather than a conventional object building.

A Public Spine Above the Market Street

The site plan reveals the proposal as a long urban spine.

Instead of concentrating public activity in a single node, the project distributes interventions along the length of the existing flyover. This is particularly relevant to the site because the surrounding neighborhood is itself linear and movement-intensive.

The elevated route becomes an alternative public layer running through the dense urban fabric.

People can walk along the central path while modular activity zones occupy selected edges. These spaces do not eliminate circulation. They coexist with it.

The project therefore creates a sequence of changing urban conditions:

movement followed by pause,

pause followed by play,

play followed by gathering,

gathering followed by movement again.

This rhythm is visible in the diagrams, where different modular arrangements respond to distinct social intentions.

Designing for Neighbors, Children, and Market Workers

A notable quality of the project is its attempt to respond to multiple stakeholder groups rather than defining a single ideal user.

The design boards identify separate spatial philosophies for different communities.

Sitting Space for Neighbors

Some modular clusters create seating areas intended to encourage interaction among local residents. In a neighborhood where ground-level space is heavily contested, even a modest place to sit can become socially significant.

The architecture supports informal conversation rather than prescribing a formal program.

Play Space for Children

The proposal also introduces children’s activity zones.

The modules can be reorganized into steps, climbing elements, elevated forms, and slides. This transforms the flyover from an inaccessible remnant into a recreational landscape.

The project drawings suggest that the open central zone can also support temporary games and neighborhood activities.

Sitting Space for Market Workers

Another configuration addresses marketers and workers. Here, the spatial logic appears more concerned with rest, openness, and selective privacy.

This is particularly important within the project narrative because the surrounding wholesale economy creates long periods of intense physical activity. The intervention acknowledges workers not only as agents of commerce but as people who also require places to pause.

The Central Walking Pathway as Flexible Social Space

Between the modular interventions, the design preserves a central linear zone.

This space functions primarily as a walking pathway, but its program is intentionally flexible. According to the project concept, it can also host small events, cultural activities, local gatherings, and temporary social functions.

This is where the proposal extends beyond a simple elevated park.

The central path becomes a civic surface.

It can accommodate everyday movement when no event is taking place, then shift into a shared neighborhood arena when required. The architecture does not depend on permanent programming. Instead, it provides spatial capacity for changing community uses.

This flexibility is a key component of the design.

In dense urban environments, public space often needs to serve multiple purposes across different hours, days, and seasons. Parasite embraces this condition by keeping its central corridor open and adaptable.

A Miniature Cultural Forum Within a Chaotic Urban Setting

The designers describe the combined host and parasite as a kind of miniature cultural forum.

This phrase captures the project’s broader social ambition.

The intervention is not trying to compete with the scale of a major civic center. It is not a monumental cultural building. Its importance comes from inserting small opportunities for public life into a context where such opportunities are scarce.

A child can play.

A market worker can rest.

Neighbors can sit together.

Pedestrians can walk above the congested street.

A local event can temporarily occupy the central space.

A small cultural activity can bring together people who otherwise pass one another within the intensity of daily commerce.

Through these modest acts, the flyover acquires a new civic identity.

Access Through Adjacent Buildings

The relationship between the flyover and surrounding buildings is central to the project’s circulation strategy.

Because the elevated structure passes close to adjacent buildings, the proposal introduces connections from building floors located at approximately the same height as the flyover.

The sectional drawing explains this connection as a lightweight bridging system.

The project proposes slabs made from foam concrete, supported on steel T-section beams extending between the adjacent building floor and the flyover.

This allows the design to use an existing spatial condition, the limited gap between structure and building, as an access opportunity.

Conceptually, this reinforces the parasitic logic. The intervention does not operate as a completely independent object. It forms connections with the urban fabric around it.

Structural Strategy and Lightweight Construction

The proposal considers the challenge of adding new occupation to an existing structure.

For the connecting pathways, the design specifies foam concrete because of its lightweight characteristics and intended durability and fire resistance within the project concept.

Steel T-sections support the connections between adjacent buildings and the elevated flyover.

The modular parasite units follow another construction logic. Rather than relying entirely on conventional masonry or heavy prefabricated components, the project proposes units based on locally recoverable waste materials.

This becomes one of the strongest links between the spatial strategy and the project’s sustainability agenda.

Eco-Bricks and the Reuse of Market Waste

The modules are proposed using eco-bricks, described in the project as plastic bottles densely packed with plastic waste.

These units are then assembled using silicone adhesive and clad with weather-resistant cardboard panels.

The importance of this material strategy lies in its relationship to the site.

The project identifies plastic and cardboard waste as materials associated with the surrounding wholesale markets. Instead of treating the market only as a source of congestion, the design also considers it as a potential material resource.

Waste generated locally can be redirected into the construction of the intervention.

This introduces a circular logic:

the market produces discarded material,

the discarded material becomes a construction resource,

the construction resource creates modules,

the modules support public life for the same neighborhood.

That closed relationship gives the project a deeper environmental narrative.

Sustainable Architecture Through Local Material Recovery

The sustainability of Parasite is not limited to adding recycled components.

The broader strategy begins with the decision to retain and repurpose an existing structure.

The flyover already represents a major investment of material, labor, and urban space. By assigning it a new program, the project avoids conceptual dependence on a completely new site and a completely new primary structure.

The modular system then adds another layer of resource awareness by proposing components derived from locally available waste streams.

Together, these decisions position the project at the intersection of adaptive reuse architecture, urban regeneration, and sustainable public space design.

Its environmental argument is therefore spatial as well as material.

Fire Safety as Part of the Intervention

The project brief also addresses fire safety.

Fire extinguishers are proposed in relation to the parasite modules, while the modular components are intended to receive fire-retardant finishes. The connecting slabs are specified in foam concrete, which the project selects partly for its fire-resistant performance.

These measures indicate an attempt to integrate safety thinking into the conceptual development of the intervention.

For a project that introduces public activity onto reused infrastructure, such considerations are essential to the architectural narrative.

Architecture as a Tool for Reinterpreting Failure

At its core, Parasite is a project about changing the meaning of an existing structure.

The flyover begins as an incomplete object.

It is associated with obstruction, dispute, spatial inconvenience, and unrealized purpose.

The project does not erase that history. Instead, it builds a new identity on top of it.

This makes the proposal especially relevant within the discourse of adaptive reuse architecture. The intervention suggests that urban structures should not be evaluated only according to the function for which they were originally designed.

A transport structure can become public space.

An obstacle can become a platform.

A dead corridor can become a social spine.

An incomplete project can become the host for another form of architecture.

A New Layer of Public Life for Kolkata

The final visualizations present the transformed flyover as an active social environment.

People sit along modular edges. Others walk through the central corridor. Children occupy open areas. Temporary events animate the wider spaces. The architecture remains visually lightweight, repetitive, and adaptable.

Importantly, the proposal does not attempt to reproduce a conventional ground-level park in the sky.

Its character comes from the specific conditions of the host.

The linear geometry of the flyover remains visible.

The surrounding buildings remain close.

The relationship with the market district remains intense.

The architecture works within these constraints rather than pretending they do not exist.

This is why the project’s parasitic concept is effective. The new intervention gains meaning precisely because of its dependence on an imperfect host.

Parasite as a Model of Adaptive Reuse Architecture

Parasite presents a strong speculative model for how unused infrastructure might be reconsidered in dense cities.

Its significance lies in the combination of several strategies:

reuse of an abandoned structure,

creation of elevated public space,

modular programming,

access from surrounding buildings,

flexible community use,

recycled local materials,

and direct engagement with neighborhood stakeholders.

The project does not treat architecture as the production of an isolated object. It treats architecture as a process of identifying latent capacity within an existing urban condition.

That approach gives the proposal relevance far beyond its immediate site.

Cities contain unfinished structures, obsolete infrastructures, leftover spaces, and failed developments. Many remain physically present long after their original purpose has disappeared. Adaptive reuse architecture offers a framework for asking whether these structures can support new forms of public value.

Parasite answers that question with an emphatic yes.

Designed by Iftiker Alom, Rohan Samanta, Sreetama Pal, and Snehasish Mahata, Parasite transforms an abandoned flyover in Jorabagan into a speculative public landscape for movement, play, rest, culture, and community interaction.

The project responds directly to the extreme density of its context. Where there is no room for a conventional plaza, it creates a new public plane above the street. Where infrastructure has lost its original purpose, it introduces a new civic identity. Where market activity generates waste, it proposes the recovery of materials for modular construction.

Most importantly, the project demonstrates how adaptive reuse architecture can begin with a change in perception.

The incomplete flyover is no longer only a problem.

It becomes a host.

The modular intervention is no longer simply an addition.

It becomes a parasite that activates, occupies, and transforms.

Together, host and parasite produce a new layer of urban life within one of the city’s most intense environments.