Case Study: Wholesale Greengrocer’s Market

Old Habits, New Buildings

While markets were once the great gathering places of a community, functions such as wholesale trade are more and more frequently relegated to architecturally insignificant, anonymous warehouse spaces: a worldwide trend with negative repercussions for both the cultural traditions of trade, as well as for the individual labor’s experience of work. The design of Bursa’s wholesale greengrocer’s and fishmonger’s markets, on the other hand, maintain the idiom of the high, vaulted bazaar, connecting the new buildings symbolically and functionally with long-standing Central Asian architectural and cultural traditions.

The complex patterns of vehicle, material, and pedestrian traffic are carefully coordinated within fluid, elliptical shapes, which in turn are bordered by brokers’ offices. The rational form of the 350 meter-long greengrocer’s market is designed to facilitate easy orientation, efficient exchange, and optimal routing of foodstuffs from suppliers to retailers and restaurateurs – all of which keeps down transaction costs. But it is also a good place to work: an animated space and architecture that is representative of the energy and productivity of the laborers, as well as of the city of Bursa.