THE TENSILE BYWAY
ART MARKET, 2021, Hamilton, in collaboration with Ezra Saunders & Ellie Kingsley
The Tensile Byway is a site of community activation and organization centered around a steel canopy. This market structure is designed to facilitate the creating and the sharing of art and entertainment. This canopy market organizes programs through the arrangement of vertical and horizontal panels to create a spatial and visual sequence. The structure mimics an organic canopy by suspending perforated steel plates through a tensile connected structure to a steel column grid. Gaps within the steel grid offer an opportunity for an expanded space designed for large programmatic activities and further express the capabilities of steel in tension.
SITE LOCTATION
The Tensile Byway occupies an underused parking lot situated between two highly utilized pedestrian areas in Hamilton, Ontario. The site brings back the history of the steel industry in Hamilton and presents a unique opportunity to create an elongated rectilinear entertainment space and art market. The experience of the market is one of tension, expansion vs. compression, elevation, and movement.