Skybar

Skybar is a proposal for a new bell tower for the existing market hall of the Food Center Amsterdam. The new tower is a representation of the new destination that the Central Market Hall will be given as a publicly accessible food hub for Amsterdam. We interpret it as an opportunity to extend the food experience into the air.

In the spirit of the functional expressionistic style of the Markthal, the new tower is an efficient and expressive translation of its program. By separately executing the lift and staircase, which are necessary to make the bar easily accessible and safe, a slender composition is created that makes the circulation of people and products visible. The materialization in brick and glass seeks connection with the existing monument.

The result of the composed tower and its materialization is a three-dimensional sculpture that, like the historical market hall, seeks a balance between large and small, mass and emptiness, inaccessibility and intimacy. The small, outward-facing sky volume functions as the opposite of the gigantic inward-facing atrium. The atrium is like a multifunctional mega-container that tries to capture the emptiness, the sky volume like a multifunctional space capsule that seeks emptiness.