Michael Hance

[IM]permanence
The farmers market takes place every Wednesday and Saturday, from 8 a.m. until noon and only runs through eight months of the year. When the market is out of town, this space doubles as the cities largest downtown parking lot and is bordered on the north by Little Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan and on the south by the Boardman River. By designing a market hall, you are in fact designing for a multitude of functions that may be held inside or outside your structure. Hence, the spaces created must have flexibility, multiple uses and be able to accommodate what the citizens demand of it.

This design proposal aims at doing just that. The areas around the building are multiuse and cohabitate both public and private spaces during different times of the day/week/month/year. Moveable pieces of social infrastructure are scattered around the site to allow the users options when creating their personal or private spaces. Farmer’s may push these to the back to allow vehicular access to the river during market times, or pedestrians may push them towards the river to enjoy the park while the market is away. The interior space follows the same concept by providing programmatic elements that move up and down to accommodate the different demands of the site. As one function leaves the space and another moves in, an interesting dance between the site’s public and private spaces continues.