Designed in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020, Super-Wet-Market transforms architectural representation into a vehicle to engage in the ongoing discussion during a pandemic.
Starting from an ontological study of the term - wet market, this project rethinks how we can incorporate the modern industrialized processing system in supermarkets and the expression of the process in the traditional markets, aka wet markets.
As provocative as it may sound, Super Wet Market is not just a playful critic of the cultural “Otherness” phenomenon in the blame game after Covid -19. But it also signifies a possible reality of what the future grocery store experience should be like.
SUPER-WET-MARKET
Since the urbanization of groceries, mechanical elements play a crucial role in the alienation of customers and the grocery. Yet, it is also a cultural connotation that compels -the customers to come for that exact sense of dis-attachment.
Starting from indexing the mechanical elements in food processing lines, my thesis project - Super Wet Market attempts to reconfigure an automated hyper-reality of the traditional market in Urban Las Vegas.
INDEXING AUTOMATION
SUPER MARKET:
A POST CAPITALIST CONDITION
In the System of Object, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard describes how the expression of automation reflects a fetish of seeing the processes in a society where humans become increasingly unattached from the items they use.
Paradoxically, the typology of the Supermarket is both highly dependent on an automated processing system and, at the same time, alienates produce from the customers by intentionally concealing the system running behind — an analogy of post-modern capitalism.
URBAN FARM TO TABLE
In Super Wet Market, the expression of automation here reconstructs and enhances an illusion of Farm-to-Table Experience, which is opposite to what automation does in Conventional Supermarkets,
Using a vierendeel truss system, the project combines the production of foods and the processing of them. The mechanics superimpose the circulation of materials and energy with human circulation.
It creates a grocery experience that attracts both the foodies who value farm-to-table quality and freshness and the less informed customers who are used to environments such as Walmart.
MACHINE AS SPACE SYNTAX
The expression of automation here helps reconstructs an illusion of Farm-to-Table experience, opposite to what it does in the Supermarket These mechanics elements, including conveyor belt, escalators, and power generators, are expressed as space syntaxes to highlight the moments in different stages of food processing.
Different vendors and departments of processing are layouts in a way to highlight the spectacle effect. By pulling apart spaces for individual shopping sections on multiple levels, different shopping sections become mega-size displaying shelves on the city scale.
HEDONIC SPECTACLE
A SUPER-WET SPECTACLE
What makes a market “wetter” than others? To me, a market gets wetter when it is more honest in exposing the processing of grocery products. As more advanced grocery stores start to offer live oysters and showcase steaks in the process of dried aging, one can imagine that the future of the Super Market typology will be in the “Wet-ness” of a market.
In this sense, “Super Wet” refers to the performance of a ceremonial exhibition for the processing of grocery products in situ.
