2024 Award of Honor in Design ASLA Alabama Chapter
Highside Market is an urban infill and adaptive reuse development located at the crossroads of 13th Street and 2nd Avenue in Columbus, Georgia. Highside includes over 55,000 square feet of retail, dining, office, and unique gathering space across a 1.8 acre site and serves as the epicenter for community and meaningful culinary, aesthetic, cultural, and relational experiences.
This half city block was once used as an automobile dealership, repair shop, bank, and parking lot. Rather than starting with an empty slate, this project attempted to work with the immense embodied energies and rich layers of local histories that have already been invested in this location. Building 211, Highside’s flagship structure, was built in 1939 and previously operated as the premier auto dealership in Columbus for 55 years. This space has been transformed into an open market that hums with activity of people eating, shopping, mingling, working, and connecting. Building 201 was built in 1959 as a bank but takes on a new life with a ground floor restaurant, basement bar, and second floor art gallery space. A new structure, Building 207, was added amidst this historic fabric to increase density within the precinct. Building 213, formerly an automotive repair shop, was strategically deconstructed to become a large-scale shade pavilion and exterior event space. All these interior interventions, within both new and old structures, were carefully designed to extend into the landscape. A fleet of tables, chairs, benches, and stools populate the precinct, offering a wide variety of microclimates to maximize comfort throughout the seasons.
Not only does the project assertively reuse existing structures, it also reuses existing materials harvested from the precinct. As an example, thick steel trench grates from the automotive building were reappropriated as exterior benches. The structures and materials of Highside Market tell of many histories of the site, and the design team strives to create an inclusive environment where a new collection of diverse stories can be added in the future.
Grounded in the eccentric culture of the Deep South, the design revels in the Southern spirit of craft, thrift, and resourcefulness. Simple materials, such as concrete, gravel, and block, were employed in unexpected ways. Humble concrete paving is scored and raked to provide a distinct and human-scaled texture to the ground. The diagonal pattern of industrial safety stripes becomes a common language throughout the precinct that ties together a variety of materials and spaces. Each material is intended to add a new layer of texture and patina to the rich tapestry of the site while carefully creating a space that is unifying, flexible, accessible, and welcoming.
Collaboration with Barnes Gibson Partners, Architecture Square Feet Studio, Interiors
