Making Market Halls: Urban and Food Regeneration in Fribourg

Cities have been shaped by the exchange of food goods. The market hall was the building where the market took place as a social and economic activity. Their slow disappearance in the 20th Century was mostly due to a shift in consumption pattern as well as the emergence of new socio-economical models such as supermarkets and malls, erected outside of the cities. Nowadays, market halls are embracing innovative socio-economic models, redefining their role as vital exchange platform within cities, facilitating and reinforcing connections between producers and consumers and actors of the agri-food industry. This emerging paradigm acknowledge market halls as a transformative agent that align with modern consumer values, fostering a sense of purpose and injecting fresh energies into urban environments for new vitalities in cities. The project is a transformation of an abandoned banal industrial building into a market hall for the district of Pérolles. The project intervenes from the building to the whole block to revitalize this mixed neighborhood, with the potential to strengthen community building in the area and offer new dynamics to the city. Thanks to public and semi-public programs, the district is being revitalized around a system based on food, that enhances its social and community power.