For the Google Urbanism workshop, the group chose the Mercat de la Boqueria as our target site.  When we entered the market during the field trip, there were a few key observations that stood out.  For one, the market-goers were mostly tourists who enjoyed the sights and smells of the market, but for the most part, didn’t end up purchasing any food.  Part of this may have been due to the fact that they don’t know anything about the food or where it comes from.  Additionally, the merchants are pushing the sale of the product, at times making the consumer feel like a target instead of part of the experience.  There were also too many opportunities to leave the stands or market as a whole due to the physical design of the space and its exit pathways.

Therefore, our project proposal for the market was to both redesign the physical space and market operations to improve the value of food and the interactions between the “merchants” and the “consumer.”  The proposal was to change the market into a “Knowledge Sharing Food Habitat,” meaning the “merchants” are hired by the market as “food curators” of their territory, working with each other to share knowledge about the food to the consumer.  The physical space will also change into more of an art exhibition feel organized by Catalan territory, designed to keep the consumer engaged with the “food curators” and the stories behind the food.  For the presentation, we decided to present a comic series to demonstrate the journey that the consumer takes and how the people he meets and the knowledge he gains enhances the food he or she ends up purchasing.

Mercat de la Boqueria:  A Knowledge Sharing Food Habitat is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia
developed at Master in City & Technology in (2019/2020) by:
Students: Andrew Saltzman, Linara Salikhova, Kushal Saraiya
Faculties: Nicolay Boyadjiev