Project Details

15 Week studio.

The patrons and vendors of Charlottesville’s weekly farmer’s market, the City Market, seek a permanent home after almost two decades on a city-owned parking lot located one block from the Pedestrian Mall on Main Street. The City Market as front porch questions the homogeneity of permanent market structures, market patrons, the meaning of local food and the lack of non-market activity through creating distinct market rooms defined by microtopography, variable density urban groves, temporary construction, relocating the Local Food Hub, enhancing Ridge/McIntire Road with mixed use housing, and connecting an Urban Farm Institute to a nine-acre farm to be sited on the former City Yard, the public works site for the city. The front porch revitalizes the social and economic vitality of the historic neighborhood of Vinegar Hill by physically connecting the programs to an elevated porch as an extension of Commerce Street, formerly known as the black Main Street, which was destroyed during Urban Renewal in 1964. The elevated porch faces the City Yard urban farm and extends a pedestrian path over Ridge/McIntire extending the Pedestrian Mall West and doubling the economic potential of West Main Street.