The Markthal Rotterdam is an enormous 36,000 sq. ft. market mall in the Netherlands that sells a mouthwatering array of foods for Rotterdam’s population. The building is incredibly striking; its design resembles an elongated horseshoe with a huge, curved open space in the middle. Architecture office MVRDV created the design concept, with development by Provast. It features 100 produce units, 15 shops and 8 restaurants, as well as 228 apartments and over a thousand parking spaces. If you live there, you don’t have to travel far for food shopping. The hall expects up to 7 million visitors a year.
To celebrate the market’s abundance, the designers wanted to make something truly eye-catching. They contacted artists Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam to create a huge mural would sweep up the building’s inner curve. When you’re inside viewing the mural, it serves as both the ceiling and the walls.
Coenen and Roskam delivered a mural of vibrantly-colored fruits, vegetables, and flowers cascading from the sky. It’s titled Cornucopia and celebrates the wide variety of foods the market has to offer the city. The bright mural serves as a backdrop on the building’s interior, and lends the space an even greater feeling of airiness. The mural is generated by digital projectors and screens that cover the inside curve, measuring at 11,000 square feet. Since they’re projected, the images rotate through the space, making it look like the fruits, vegetables, flowers, and grains are raining down. “You could just look at the wonderful, almost psychedelic picture for it’s beauty,” Coenen says, “but the reference to the ‘horn of plenty’ points out the miracle that food is there for you.”
Even if you don’t want to look at giant vegetables all day, you would still enjoy food shopping here. It would be way more interesting than your run-of-the-mill grocery store!
Via BoredPanda|Designboom
