MVRDV has shared photos of its just-completed “ambitious architectural experiment” wholesale produce market project in Tainan, Taiwan.

The firm’s second foray into the country, open-air Tainan Market features a publicly-accessible green roof, punctuated at one end by an office structure, that can be further adapted for agricultural use while providing users a stepped vista onto the market floor and surrounding landscape beyond.

The design team says: “Tainan Market represents an ambitious architectural experiment. Here, MVRDV reinvents the typology of the wholesale market — a building type that is usually housed in simple metal sheds — and turns it into a mixture of a market and a public green space. In doing so, the design takes an often-prosaic part of the food industry and elevates it into a place for the public to experience food and appreciate views of the landscape.”

The market is strategically located between the edge of the city and its outer farmlands, with access to Highway 3 and public transportation nodes, a critical factor in developing a piece of public and commercial infrastructure that's convenient to buyers and wholesalers alike.

Winy Maas shares: “Tainan’s surroundings, in my opinion, is one of those areas which is so beautiful to me because of its nature, fields, farms, sea, and mountains. Tainan Market reflects this beauty as it complements the landscape. It is completely functional and caters to the needs for auctioning, selling, and buying goods, but its terraced roof with — eventually — its collection of plants and crops will allow visitors to take in the landscape while escaping from the bustle below.”

The design complements the firm’s Tainan Spring redevelopment project and will soon be joined by their Sun Rock storage facility, a  “manifesto in a building” in the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park it says will begin construction within the next year.