The old former freight warehouse west of Malmö’s Central Station was no more than a shell without a roof when the siblings Nina Totté Karyd and Martin Karyd bought it to create a new market hall. Four years later it has become a culinary destination and a gathering place for the city. Today the market hall was crowned the winner of Malmö’s Urban Design Award.

In 2013 Wingårdh Architects were commissioned to transform the ruin into a marketplace for about twenty merchants and restaurateurs.

“We are tremendously happy about the award, and that the market hall has been recognized,” says Joakim Lyth, the lead design architect on the project. “Our idea was to create a kind of three-dimensional cookbook. The first step was to preserve the ruin, the second to create as much floor space as possible, and the third to form an attractive outdoor room.”

The Urban Design Prize in Malmö is awarded once a year and is intended to reward valuable improvements to the city’s urban environment and quality of life. In evaluating projects, the jury considers architectural quality, sustainability, function, innovation, process, impact, and importance to the city. In explaining their selection the jury wrote, “In true pioneering spirit, a barren ruin has been transformed into a three-dimensional cookbook—a new meeting place for Malmö’s culinary culture. The market hall exemplifies the creative use of an ostensibly abandoned space and offers a salutary intimacy in an area characterized by large-scale projects. From these old walls a new context has been created, and a sensual architecture has emerged that shows great care for our cultural heritage and for our every sense as well.