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Market//Shelter
by
Ethan Hop
The exchange of resources, time, and
experiences are the fundamental elements in building community and finding our
own sense of safety within increasingly isolated forms of shelter.
Shelter has the ability to go beyond the normative definition of physical cover from the elements. Many seek different forms of shelter; one of which includes shelter from isolation. Psychologically, humans often seek well being and inclusion as the ultimate form of shelter. In addition, people consistently seek more than shelter as an enclosure for survival; they seek to live with autonomy and safety. In many ways, the community can serve this end.
Beyond any physical structure, the power of a community lies within the interactions and connections between its members. Market//Shelter facilitates the sharing of resources, time, and experiences in the space between dwelling units. The space acts as not only a production zone for vertical farming but also a communal living space in which residents can interact and form social bonds. The units themselves offer a gradation of privacy while engaging the center framework and inviting greater collective ownership of communal space. Within the context of densely populated urban environments, the greatest opportunity for social interaction and community building are the civic spaces and public forums. However, housing is often exclusionary towards such spaces and seeks to separate and remove itself from that context.
The positioning within the civic center of Los Angeles allows for more than just a high-traffic exchange of goods and ideas but serves as a landmark exemplifying such relationships within its greater context. Through adjacency formed with existing civic plazas and an integrated fresh food market, Market//Shelter serves the public beyond the needs of just its residents. Markets and civic plazas on the ground level allow for engagement between apartment dwellers and all members of the local community. Mutual connection between integrated food systems and public forums re-engage all levels of society from the transient visitor to the formerly homeless resident, creating a stronger and new form of community within the public and private realm.