Xiaofei Wu吴笑翡

In the past two years of study, I have been committed to how to make people more intimate and natural coexistence with space, increase the initiative of space and people's immersive experience in space. By using different materials in the same space and painting them in the same colour, it can better let people get close to the material and feel the difference between them. What I’d like to achieve is to let the immersive experience and sensory space better integrate into the fast-paced social life of today, especially in difficult times. During this uncertain period nowadays, everyone sames to be in anxiety. Could we could somewhere where people could address and deal with uncertainty and change perception of it? That what this project focus on. 

This project Sensory Market is located in the East Smithfield Market, itself a site of uncertainty; with Crossrail arriving, the Museum of London relocating to the West Smithfield Market and the meat market itself being relocated. A repurposed marketplace – somewhere to find spatial therapy.

The programme negotiates the structure and grid of the existing building creating a series of zones, each designed to meet specific feelings such as jealousy and anger and offering spaces for contemplation. At the heart of the structure is a meeting place offering a space for events and market pitches. The sequential experience through the zones is designed to offer multiple routes for the visitor with several entrance and exit points allowing shorter or longer visits and emotional journeys prescribed and/or discovered.

The design of each zone has been developed to communicate its purpose with the visitor. The spatial, material, atmospheric and temporal qualities of each zone have been considered to do sp. Correlations between geometry and scale, relationships with the existing context, material properties, temperature, humidity and acoustic quality create each zone’s atmosphere. Prescribed actions such as fixed view points, climbing walls, jumping surfaces, lagoon type pools are inspired by emotional idioms and from readings into the cognitive sciences. Thresholds between zones are treated as sensory transitions and places of exit and entrance are considered integral to the journey.