In rural Niger, markets run on a weekly basis, allowing sellers to move from village to village all week long to offer their products. With a rapidly increasing population, the village Dandaji felt a need for a more permanent market for its own inhabitants to both procure and sell goods in a more consistant way. The current weekly market was organized around an ancestral tree that had become the public space to be during Market Day for market-goers and sellers. The new project stays on the same site and amplifies an experience the village inhabitants have come to count on.

A main goal of the project was to create a space that projects a sense of confidence and aspirations for the future in the users themselves.  The project design references the area’s traditional market architecture of adobe posts and reed roofs, pushing the typology forward using compressed earth bricks and metal for durability. The solution is kept very simple, using a colorful recycled metal canopy produced through a succession of individual shading structures that compensate for the difficulty in growing trees in such an arid, desert climate. It results in an infrastructure that is visually appealing, that the users can be proud of, and that has the potential of consequently attracting more commerce to the area.