Yet behind its energy lies a fragile reality. The market lacks structure, safety, and basic facilities, making movement difficult and work harder than they need to.
Bushra’s thesis begins with empathy for this everyday scene. She asks how architecture might support the people who depend on this place without taking away its character.
Her proposal envisions a unified market complex set within an 8.3-acre site along the existing strip. The design follows the logic of the place itself, a linear form that mirrors the roadside market, but reorganised with clarity and care. Two parallel blocks run along the site, connected by bridges across multiple levels. Between them emerges an open plaza, a pause within the industrial flow, where people can meet, rest, and reclaim a sense of public life.
The marketplace is structured vertically. Heavy mechanical goods settle at the base, supported by double-height spaces and crane systems for safe handling, while lighter products rise above in layered zones. Circulation is rethought through separate entries for customers, services, and administration, allowing movement to become intuitive rather than chaotic.
Materially, the project remains rooted in its context. Repurposed ship metal mesh wraps the east and west façades, carrying the memory of dismantled vessels while suggesting a quieter form of sustainability reuse as continuity rather than novelty.
Beyond trade, the project also introduces an experience centre that tells the visitors about the history and human stories of ship-breaking, bridging the gap between industry and public awareness. Landscaped edges soften the highway’s harshness, creating spaces where people can gather, breathe, and linger.
Through this vision, Bushra does not attempt to romanticise industry, nor erase its rawness. Instead, she reorganises it with empathy and purpose. Bhatiary, in her proposal, becomes more than a marketplace. It becomes a shared civic space shaped by work and people, where the end of one journey, that of a ship, gives rise to another, rooted in livelihood, community, and continuity.
