The Brief: Redesign the town’s main market area giving it a modern twist.
The Challenge: To pedestrianise the revamped market with enclosed buildings and an open-air market.
The Project: MDNS Studio were asked to design the new food market in Forte dei Marmi, a coastal town in Italy, located near the Carrara marble quarries. The new market site was in the same area as the old one, but it needed a completely new layout and design. The first challenge was to ensure we kept the atmosphere of an open-air market alongside an indoor area. For the store architecture design, we planned a snake shaped building that winds around the outdoor square, the latter of which doubles up as a public vegetable garden and an open-air market. Wanting to highlight the regional stone, we designed the exterior with the beautiful Carrara marble, capturing the traditional bright Italian aesthetic in the plans.
Below the market, we created an area for a basement carpark. At street level, we included buildings that could be connected or separated to give vendors optimum space in the store architecture design. It was important to make the indoor market light and breezy so we chose large glass windows to allow the sunlight to pour inside.
We pedestrianised the area with a wide concourse, trees and pedestrian access from three directions. We also included calming water features allowing shoppers to rest in the sun and take in their surroundings.
The result is a store architecture design that has all the winning ingredients for a successful town food market.
