Kensington Market is a neighbourhood of market stalls and constant negotiation between public and private space, begging the question of when the two are one in the same. The neighbourhood is a community where residents are united in their social causes.
The exterior of the Community Room uses a barcode design as its main identifier, while an extensively glazed “jewelbox” at its south end (facing the corner of Denison Square and Augusta Avenue) serves as an architectural canvas on which decals and art can be applied to draw attention to events or exhibitions taking place within its second-floor indoor community space.
An outdoor terrace over the retail space serves as an “outdoor living room” for area residents, an outdoor extension of the interior community space. This retail space projects from the building onto the sidewalk as the many surrounding market stalls do, most of which are annexes to the the vestigial Victorian homes of the area.
The third floor consists of a catwalk surrounding the airy second-floor community multipurpose room, leading to a reading room which is cantilevered over the sidewalk below. This public reading room visually reaches out into the community, blurring the boundaries between the public space within the project and the semi-private market space of the sidewalk.
Plans/drawings coming soon.