MALLA MARKET

Malla Market is a fish market on the Miami River, designed in Allan Shulman’s Spring 2025 studio at the University of Miami School of Architecture. The brief was a market on the river’s edge. I covered it with a single woven gridshell roof (malla is Spanish for mesh) that filters light like a fishing net and keeps the market open to the water.

The roof hangs above like a net tossed into the air, wrapping around the space with its woven lines.

You stand beneath it, feeling caught but not trapped, like a fish moving through the gaps, watching the world beyond. Light filters through the crisscrossing threads, shifting as if waves are rolling through.

The whole market feels alive, pulsing with the rhythm of the river — sometimes flowing, sometimes still. It holds you in its grasp for a moment before letting you drift, just like the tide, just like everything that’s carried along in the sea’s endless motion.

A wood gridshell carries a translucent ETFE skin above the market floor. Stalls, storage, bar, and loading sit loose beneath it, so the canopy defines the room and the ground stays free to change.