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Project Brief:

We propose a market hall in downtown Traverse City. We believe this a sensible prospect for a civic structure and that it is well timed to reflect major changes changes in the public perception of food.

We have done this solely for our own educational purposes, however. What follows are selections from the course outline and project assignment...

As a timeless architectural type, a Market Hall invites consideration of many fundamentals: structure, climate, vehicle access, daily and seasonal cycles of use, civic identity, and more. Yet because it is likely to be characterized by a single space, it can be a relatively straightforward proposition.

It is helpful for this studio that a Market Hall can occur at just about any scale, from a couple of pushcarts to a cluster of huge convention halls. Our proposal is likely to be fairly small: to give it a nominal point of departure, let us assume 10,000 square feet. Yet depending on the mix of alternative and artisanal foods folded in, and the scheme for any beyond week-to-week tenants, and our choice of site among a set of waterfront parcels, this scale could vary.

To complement this focus on a fixed spatial form, a Market Hall serves our interest in the variation of flows over time This includes food, people, vehicles, other materials, energy, sun, wind, and more. Climate is always a consideration around food, and is a renewed focus in what the public wants of design. However, time cycles may be social as well. For example this hall may serve a prominent and peak use for an annual cherry festival. Time scales may be less than a day and more than a year: for example some tenants may be more or less permanently installed, some habitually returning, and some short-term and incidental. Diversity of access drives the design. This can mean diversity of use across the hours of the day, but also social diversity of participants. There is also diversity of transportation. Trucks could pull right in. Stalls may have wheels themselves. The usual retail formula of aisles and shopping carts is just what people come here to escape.

On a higher cultural level, the Market Hall represents Traverse City, our chosen site. As a civic amenity, the hall must represent not only how there is more to life than buying and selling, but also how commerce itself can be civilized. In this studio we are neither economists nor retail planners. This is not the moment to question big box retailing practices, nor to induce nostalgia for a simpler time when frankly there was a lot less abundance. We shall simply remind others that civic identity exists, by ambition or by neglect. Alas the latter is assumed. Ex-urban culture of second homes could hardly be further from age-old civic ideals. Instead it expects private opulence and public squalor.

Although we must suspend disbelief about the finance of this project, one of the main useful results of this studio would be a concept for a nongovernmental organization (dot org) able to pull off a public-private partnership, both fiscal and political, to make such a piece of public infrastructure more acceptable. We cannot proceed as if this is to be done by the city or a private developer alone.

 

Original project announcement (PDF)