S’Arenal Market Strip: connecting, engaging, unveiling

This project proposes to move from an unsustainable touristic model that provokes the ever-increasing abysm between tourism and local life, based on social alienation and mere consumption, to a sustainable one based on cultural exchange and healthy economic profitability, promoting the appeal of local culture to generate touristic attraction.

This project responds to the brief through four main strategies: THE STRIP AS THE NEW FRONT LINE. By activating the strip as a new front line that is located in the heart of the neighborhood, tourists are attracted in land, challenging the boundary between locals and tourists. THE STRIP AS URBAN REGENERATOR. Returning to the quality of the neighborhood’s original Mediterranean lifestyle by revitalizing its streets and providing the neighbors with better facilities. This is achieved through 6 urban actions implemented along the strip: reopening, expanding, merging, intensifying and densifying. Making S’Arenal not only worth visiting but also worth living. THE MARKET AS AN ACTIVITY GENERATOR. Taking the market as an opportunity to increase local life by multiplying its presence and diversifying its uses, so as to engage the tourist as well in the market experience. Due to the activation of the strip through the market, a new typology arises: the Vertical Market. Characterized by its duality of permanence and ephemerality, it stands out as the strip icon, recreating and intensifying the experience of the flat market in the vertical direction. THE MARKET AS THE NEW IMAGE. The market as a strategy to recall the strong identity of the Balear culture and respond to the question of tourism in a more local way, adding both cultural and economic value to S’Arenal. S’Arenal Market Strip intends to stimulate new links between the tourist and the local through the reinterpretation of the traditional Majorcan market, as a strategy to revive S’Arenal and rescue a buried identity of a neighborhood that felt once proud of it.