Les Halles 2030 – Post Humanisum Retail

2018

Collabrator: Shiling Zhong

Les Halles is locating at the central part of Paris, previously holding a big international competition, and we are proposing a revision of urban market space. 

In the age of the internet, online shopping is taking over the demand of the substantial retailing. However, we think the value of the future retail space will maintain by the multiple functionalities, by adding new functional dimension into retail space, in a radical sense, and the innovative organization of space works coherently with the form of architecture will bring fresh new user experience, spatial quality, and materiality of the project. 

We call our project the “supermarket +,” because our retail concept is integrating retail sector with the transportation and production space, and it automatically creates a new system on the site because many new relationships between objects appear. 

We think in our new system, every object should have an equal relationship with each other, and create a flatten post-humanism society of object, and architecture plays a role of providing possible linkage between object. 

We looked at Alibaba Hema market, look at the juxtaposition of human flow and mechanical delivery system surround retail space. Also, the marketing project of Volvo, how a car driving on a mat with hydro pressure underneath for providing energy to other vehicles. This precedence further proof that Objects present in our system, space, could contain their individual goal, and benefit each other through a very subtle relationship between them. 

We start to put a matrix on the site, and try to manipulate by some site condition and factor, but try to create a diagram of this autonomous relationship of objects conceptually. 

Then we move on to section relationship; the existing condition is a massive concave on the ground if we demolish the existing retail structure. We want to create new vessel floating above of this existing concave by the field study we did, formally, and with conceptually with our idea of supermarket+ .

We create a vessel floating above the underground plate, majorly for the production space but mixing with the retail and transportation. Production will use aerologic to let plants floating in the space, and inviting the public to go down to the B2 to create the new experience of public retail space. Aerologic become an architectural element to create space under it and also at the same level of it. 

On the top of the vessel is artificial rice paddy, and we have the transportation Core vertically insert in the system and connected with the horizontal linkage between production space in multiple ways.