ABOUT

A journalistic ‘current history’ of life inside the love-it-or-hate-it Market Hall in Shrewsbury. A record of the day-to-day from inside the 1965 landmark with reflections and opinions of the people there.

Designed in 1965 by the award-winning architect David du Roi Aberdeen, the Brutalist style Market Hall building in Shrewsbury causes much contention. This record of the day-to-day from inside the landmark building reflects the people who use it.

An observational essay with interviews and insights from the wide variety of tenants backed up with candid images of their everyday goings-on.

Some see the building as an eyesore intruding on the surrounding architectural mix of much loved Mediaeval, Georgian and Victorian buildings. Others love it because of this contrast and its individuality.

The Pevsner Architectural Guide pronounced the new Market Hall “a good example of modern architecture”. With modern building materials of concrete, glass and metal being used, Pevsner talks of the “clean lines and simple forms. The town’s timber-framed traditions are evoked – the upper storey is jettied out on a reinforced concrete structure and faced with vertical black fins in an echo of close studding”.

We wanted the design to be dripping with references to the Pevsver synopsis; “clean lines and simple forms…vertical black fins in an echo of close studding”.

The strong, clean vertical lines outside are brought through to the layout using narrow full-length columns, stark white space and the Compacta typeface from 1963 with its industrial appearance, a popular genre in the early 1960s, used throughout.

A self-initiated project: Author/Photographer/Designer

Synopsis:

Over the last few years, the Market Hall in Shrewsbury has become ever more popular; there’s a real community inside, it’s now a real ‘place to be’.

Completed in 1965, it is filled with a wide range of lifestyles, from traditional fruit and veg merchants, butchers, florists, many have traded there for over 30 years.

Now new traders have set up alongside; a coffeehouse, traditional barbers, organic wine merchant, even artists studios. This is an example of a day-in-the-life of the market, an observational essay with interviews and insights from the wide variety of tenants, backed up with candid images of their everyday goings-on.