Weathermart

Abstract

Weathermart reinvents the supermarket by questioning the generic big-box typology, where produce is placed in the same way, in an hermetically sealed environment. Supermarkets now consume excess energy by heating and cooling in one giant open space. I am proposing a new typology of a supermarket that is organized thermodynamically into small chambers of different temperature zones to both mediate energy loss and enable external conditions to participate in the energy dynamics of food storage and consumption. Excess heat generated from cooling is used to heat cooked foods or warm up one of the adjacent spaces. The project utilizes 3 strategies: 1) creation of smaller active and passive chambers, 2) introduction of external chambers adjacent to the passive chambers, 3) the inhabitation of the poche spaces. In this new thermally activated market, seasonal climates of the region participate in the energy exchanges between inside and outside. Gradational spectrum of heat and moisture begin to become part of a greater external spectrum of nature as it starts to expose its boundaries. Weathermart proposes a new environment between inside and outside, controlled and uncontrolled, permanent and temporal. During winter, it utilizes the chilled air from outside to keep the fresh fishes cold, and in summer, it keeps the moderate temperature for selling ripe fruits and vegetables. Relative locations from cold chambers to hot chambers will have different relation to its environment as it migrates across US. Weathermart acts like a sponge, breathing in and out the cycles of weathers.