People's Supermarket

Public markets were once a very important place to a city. However with the growth of the city and heavy usage of traffic, big-box supermarkets start to find its way into the city. The supermarket revolution had overtaken the public markets identity in most urban cities. However, due to recent events known as the supermarket bully-boy tactics, brought an awareness to the public. In result, the public starting to turn away from these chain supermarkets and start to support the local produce. However, even with the support from the public, public markets still find hard to grow within the urban city. This thesis investigates how a hybrid building could be the solution for the public markets in the city from being evicted due to urban land development. This is investigated by incorporating the public market as part of the building’s design development. Besides incorporating the market into the building, the nature of the market as a public place needed to be retained. As the chosen site for this project is situated in an area between two high activity neighborhoods, the project’s design seeks to channel the vibrancy from the surrounding area through the building. The research had identified several public programs other than the market to be integrated into the project’s design. The aim is to design a vibrant urban public place, engaging with the people and building a sense of community within the inner city area. This design-led research thesis breaks-down the project’s complexity into three separate faces to be investigated. The first design phase introduces the overall design scheme and describes the programs relativity to the project. This phase carried on with the investigation and documentation of the form finding process through a series of physical modelling and images. This then led to the second phase of the research involving the market. This phase investigates the physical realms in public market design from a socio-spatial perspective and design principles for making farmer’s markets a public space. The investigation considers the circulation route defined by the promenade and the layout of the stalls. Diagrammatic analysis was conducted throughout these investigations. The outcome of these investigations will reflect on the latter decision for the overall design outcome. The research carried on to phase three where the final design outcome of the design is documented. The design process is generated through the combination of investigation outcomes gathered in phase one and two.