The James Street precinct has become the city’s premier address for leisure shopping.

And within the precinct, the James Street Market, designed by Cox Architecture and completed in 2002, is a much-loved fresh produce, dining, and homewares retail pavilion.

It is sited on a long, relatively narrow lot with a small frontage to James Street.

The client had previously struggled with designs involving conventional longitudinal arcades because the retail outlets deep into the site were unlikely to receive walk-ins.

A further constraint was the presence of a vehicular easement across the site at about mid-length.

The Cox design solution was to merge the typologies of the classic market hall and the shopping street.

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