From Dawn to Dusk. Space and Contamination in markets.

Markets are identifying spaces of society and Mediterranean markets are representations of the history of the Mediterranean and its culture. Contamination is the main focus of the market. A market is an architectural space created by contamination, both statically and dynamically, composed of people passing by, eyes looking, voices, and goods, overlapping colours and stacks, non-design. The opposite of architecture designed with control and glamour, markets realize space in their chaos, which is their strength. A street market transforms any anonymous, grey street into an active, colourful, dynamic urban space. Every openair bazaar, once it closes, becomes a simple, anonymous road again revealing the sense of contamination that becomes space. Even the large Middle Eastern souks or nineteenth-century European markets with their designed and defined iron architectures, such as the Bouqueria in Barcelona, when seen in the closing hours seem dull, lacking: their architectural quality needs life to reveal its energy. With reference to examples around the Mediterranean, this essay investigates the relationship between space and its contamination, proposing the definition of a greater cultural value of space, which moulds into chaos, characterizing itself as a collective project of identifying space.