Abasto Food Court

We looked into the original morphologies of fairs and markets.

The origin of the polis and the market's first home. A meeting point, a place that calls people together.

A natural event. A space of interaction. A centre of eco-perceived sustainability.

The proposal starts from the idea of rebuilding the DNA of sustainable public space inside the shopping centre, recreating green areas for leisure. Far from bringing in real nature, we emulate an organic universe that is deliberately orthogonal, built as a topographic chequerboard.

We recreate a picnic setting through the eco-perception of several of its elements as a design strategy. Its sustainable materials are part of the same message.

We claim the spontaneous and deliberate gathering of mixed uses, typical of a contemporary city, as the only viable proposal for today's commercial spaces. We divided these into cells and named them:

Eco-wellbeing: green areas recreated for gastronomic use (picnic).

Play: leisure spaces built through topographic configurations.

Connectivity: areas set up ergonomically, with specific furniture, for remote work (networking).

Market: areas beneath the atria (stands) for commercial units that ideally complement the new use of the leisure areas.

These four cells make up a set of mixed uses and stand for a dynamism ready to host every kind of visitor. Two large atria, I and II, work as viewpoints from which to see and be seen, coexisting with and resolving both leisure and gastronomic uses. There is a great deal of history behind the Abasto shopping centre, and we considered it essential to build an independent identity so that this space has a life of its own.