urban intervention - continued

 Walking around Watney Market last weekend made me think and I listed simple design requirements for the project

 - increasing the number of stalls

 - making them more attractive

 - widening the range of goods on sale + catering facilities (flexible design of the stall that will allow to display different sorts of products or set up mobile catering equipment)

 - space for presenting boxes with vegetables in front of the stall

 - change current positioning of the stalls – they cover shop windows from the eyes of the passing crowd

I have also played around with those geodesic-dome elements. I think it resulted in some smooth shapes for the stalls roof. One thing that bothers me is the fact that multiple amount of little stalls may not be good enough. There is a limited space between shop windows on each side and a continuous structure going through the middle of the market would be an ideal solution in that case.

urban intervention - stall idea

i have been playing with some straws today and ended up with this geometrical, stall-like structure. i was going to develop it further into an actual model, but the lines seem a bit provoking and i think they would disrupt the empty watney market area too much. in order to enhance the area visually, I need to look for something that will integrate more with the straight lines of the buildingsand gently fill the grey, open space.

urban intervention - watney market

In the early years of the 20th century it was one of the liveliest local markets in London: in 1902 there were over 100 shops and 100 stalls.

By the 1960s Watney Market was in decline: people were moving away, and beginning to shop elsewhere. By the end of the decade only a handful of stalls was left.

Sites were cleared for redevelopment - housing and a new market - but it was slow in coming.

Twenty years on, the rebuilding is now more or less finished, and the area has been expensively landscaped, but its character has gone. There are no permanents stalls and the product range seems to attract only a few out of the whole group of passersby.