East Coast vs. West Coast
If there is one project that, for me, exemplifies the work of Koning Eizenberg Architecture, it’s the decades-long transformation of the Original Farmers Market in Los Angeles from quaint tourist attraction to thriving public amenity. Famously located at the “corner of Third and Fairfax” since 1934, the market is like an open-air version of Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market in terms of program, but not design. More like Melbourne’s laneways in its organization, the market unfolds within the space between a relatively fixed and banal architecture, setting up social spaces primarily for dining while accommodating a diversity of uses and people. As the only reliable quasi-public space in my neighbourhood – just four blocks from where I live – it’s open early and late, free, always lively, and one of the few design models for outdoor space that leverages LA’s benign climate (more on that later).
My introduction to Hank Koning and
