Ridley's scaffolding in place for opening night featuring latex curtains, and a single central tricked-out 2nd floor table whose central panel decends with pulleys to the lower level open air kitchen

…opened tonight in the middle of London’s Ridley Road Market in Dalston – which I visited with my London Animal Estates collaborator Benjamin Reichen (of the super design collective Åbäke) whose former students had masterminded the project – alas, we were to early to eat, but were at least able to see the structure, seating, kitchen, coming together for this very cool project…

Ridley’s, a temporary dining experience in Dalston, is a project by The Decorators and Atelier ChanChan. This group of designers-artists-architects have transformed an exposed yet derelict void in Ridley Road market, into a podium for outdoor exhibitionist eating.

For the month of September a two-storey structure will rise above the stalls, housing a new kind of market food initiative. Come and exchange market produce for a meal if you’re having lunch or bring £15 if you’re looking for dinner (includes your dinner and a £5 food shopping voucher for use at the market ).

A lineup of guest chefs will create daily menus from market produce only, whilst diners share a communal table high above the market. Meals prepared in the ground floor kitchen, the hub of exchange and production, will be raised by a mechanical table up to the guests on the first floor. This scenographic journey emphasises the vertical transformation of the raw food at market level to the cooked meals at the elevated podium above.

This temporary summer installation is a means of demonstrating the kind of activities that could be created to make the life of this market sustainable and is an opportunity to re-imagine the possibilities for the regeneration of the area. (website)