Other Market Street Park

Instructor: Anthony Averbeck
Location: Charlottesville, Virginia 
Term: Fall 2018


The Other Market Street Park is an urban cultural center fusing public and private realms of the downtown mall and current Market Street Park into one concealed space. Learning from the lessons of the current Market Street Park (origin of the 2017 Charlottesville riot), paths tangential to the center lead to and form an inner courtyard; this lesson is translated into the structure as the voids -- formed by the circulation -- create five buildings extruded with three distinctive programs.

Its 7200 square foot site is occupied in its entirety to serve as a center for culture for the entirety of the Charlottesville community; temporary and permanent exhibits, a co-working space, maker space, and urban gardens serve as one entity to inform one another to greater serve the cultural center.

Upon arrival, visitors will first see a gentle grade of four buildings raising to a single, unified height with a back piece raising to the heights of the downtown mall. Walls cutting into the ground and sky invite the user down to a hidden courtyard, out of sight from the street’s onlookers. Upon entering to an ADA accessible ramp, the paths creating the courtyard extrude down to form the walls of the exhibit, with apertures in place to create connections between the exhibits. With triangular formations and natural rises in heights, the Other Market Street Park fits in with the existing conditions to form a cohesive dialogue with the preconditions of the site.