Market Hall

A covered public room with almost no walls

Field: Mixed Use & Public Realm
Setting: Neighbourhood centre
Scale: Study of a single-span canopy
Status: Design research

Large-span roof structure over an open public hall

Reference imagery: licensed photography of the built environment, not studio work

Statement

A roof, a floor, a water point and a set of rules. The study asks how little enclosure a public building can have and still be usable across a full year, and what the roof must then do to compensate.

01. Span

A single structural span keeps the floor entirely free. The roof is deep enough to hold rainwater collection, shading louvres and a lighting track without any of them being visible from below.

Open covered structure with slender columns and daylight — Market Hall, span

02. Edge

Sliding perimeter screens, not walls. In the coldest months the hall contracts to a third of its area around the heated core; for the rest of the year it opens fully to the square and stops being a building at all.

Public building canopy with repeating structural bays — Market Hall, edge

03. Floor

A single graded stone floor runs from inside to outside with no threshold, no upstand and no change of material. Everything that makes it a market, including stalls, power and water, plugs into a grid of floor boxes on a fixed module.