La Pyramide market
Architectural photography
Family-friendly: true
La Pyramide market, designed by Italian architect Rinaldo Olivieri between 1968-73, now stands as a vacant monument to its own grand ambitions. A great concrete pyramid strapped to a pair of lift towers as if ready for takeoff, it was a brave attempt to reinvent the covered market for the African city. Keen not to replicate the mistakes of the hermetic glazed towers that were cropping up across Abidjan, Olivieri aimed to capture the lively free-for-all spirit of the markets he had visited in nearby villages. He designed a large central hall full of activity, above which offices, studios and restaurants would step back in a big hollow ziggurat – all stacked on top of a gargantuan basement, complete with supermarket, nightclub and parking for 1,800 cars.
It was nothing if not optimistic. But with high maintenance costs and a hugely inefficient ratio of rentable space to circulation, it proved a massive failure, left empty since the 1980s economic crash and now gutted and partly squatted. Its fate remains precarious.