The Abrantes Municipal Market was designed by Lisbon studio ARX Portugal to provide several storeys of stalls for local businesses and to act as a thoroughfare linking two distinct parts of the town.
ARX Portugal has taken charge of designing this market for Abrantes's municipality in Portugal. A market that moves away from the traditional typology of this type of buildings, searching to be an opened and luminous building, while the project takes advantage of the principal idea of the street markets, which take the public space of the street, connecting two streets placed on different level.
Ane can cut across, going from one street to the other, through the stairway opened at the northern edge, or wandering between the stands and the spiral staircase located at the southern edge. Deep down, it is basically a street, shaped with walls and covered by a white-washed shell of exposed concrete. On the top of the building, two volumes capture the sunlight that flows to the lower floors through openings in the slabs at each level, softly lighting all spaces, highlighting the concrete’s texture and exposing the passing of the hours.
