The abandonment of the Gary Farmers Market* the year following its unveiling in 1975, leaves the city of Gary with a complicated and remarkable site. Forty-eight years have passed as steel has rusted and cracks have developed in the concrete. Mosses, plants, and trees have rooted and grown, and debris has accumulated. The Farmers  Market site now hosts a micro-climate of shade and overgrowth.  Large steel truss-work shapes still float overhead—elegantly and optimistically as ever, but now intertwine with voluntary trees that have become part of the architecture and the architecture part of the trees. The nutrient cycles for this unintended plant-life echo the nutrient cycles tapped by humans in the production of food that the market was originally designed to serve. 

Fly-dumped building materials, abandoned household items, and strips of wire casings left behind by scavengers carefully pulling copper from salvaged electrical wire are all indicators of alternative market forces at work and have all found their way into this installation. The Gary market stand prototype creates a moment to observe and speculate on this confluence of material, economic,  social, and ecological conditions. It creates a moment to witness the passage of time measured in accumulated growth-rings of wood and thickening of moss. It doesn’t lay out a specific plan for the future but despite the ruptured civic promise that the site currently represents—this project speculatively clings to the complex and humble social promise of a local marketplace. 

*Whitley & Whitley Architects, LLC (Cleveland, Ohio) see Steel Studio installation