The Healthy Living Centre Part 1 Project 2001 Christopher Mchale Mackintosh School of Architecture | UK What does ‘healthy living’ mean to me?As a conceptual idea, it was to create a self-funding scheme, which would provide the general public with local market, where residents could grow and sell their own fresh vegetables, and as a result, would generate a new community base industry which would deal with both the local and the city economy.The first insertion into the space is a subtle one, consisting of an underground greenhouse with an integrated structural system, which solves both the loading requirements and the environmental issues of ventilation and shading.Linked to the greenhouse is the production space, designed specifically for packaging, together with a food bar for the market traders, which spills out into the exterior space. The structure is kept simple to reflect its industrial usage, clad externally in timber, to relate to the market stalls, covered by a lightweight ‘green’ growing mat roof, supported on a steel tray.Finally, the market stalls, conceptually the most important part of the scheme due to their cantilevering roofs which reach out towards Partick, emphasising the idea of movement and direction within the scheme.Overall, the Healthy Living Centre in Partick, proposes a radical reconditioning of public lifestyles within the community, with minimum intervention. This project was based on the Scottish Ecological Design Association (SEDA) student competition for a Healthy Living Centre, set in Partick, Glasgow.The student's project was selected as a submission for the RIBA part 1 student medal, for its forward thinking approach as a financially sustainable proposal with an architectural concept both complex and contradictory. The cantilevers are provocative although they have to be read as symbolic of a building and a service which stretches well beyond the built form, to create a unique local proposal.The technical investigations are sophisticated and ambitious, entirely in keeping with the architectural concept.