sen by kiki
Location: Findlay Market, Cincinnati, OH
Completed: April 2022
Project Type: Food Stall
Design Team:
Team B: John Stoughton, David Corns, -
General Contractor: Team C
Photography: Ryan Back
The frenetic market hall is a surprisingly fertile ground for quality design. Space is highly contested, so efficiency is rewarded. At the same time, a place like this necessitates salience, legibility, and even some help hawking wares. And yet, within Findlay Market’s historic shell, the montage of bombastic banners, a flurry of motion, mingling smells, and noise (of all types) approach a sort of strange coherence - out of which can emerge something that both belongs and stands out.
A wood shroud surrounds the seafood case structured off of a wireframe steel framework. Hand-painted signwork establishes presence in a busy market hall, projecting off the steel frame and wrapping a corner to emphasize the diagonal approach at the market intersection. At the bar, passersby throw back oysters on the half shell from a gnarled mollusc-like rail. Pictogram graphics introduce a playful backdrop for menu boards and wax paper for the food eaten at the standing bar. Hand woven lampshades evoke traditional fisherman’s baskets. The woven motif in turn is transformed into the checkered pattern on the wood below.
