Overview
Christian Lasso, an architect and designer at Mallol Arquitectos in Panama, won the People's Choice award for a proposal that rethinks the very purpose of Spitalfields Market — shifting it from a place of exchanging goods to a place of exchanging skills and knowledge. The project answers that brief through a habitable topography: a generous public surface above, with the supporting programme tucked beneath.
The concept
Christian's proposal reframes Spitalfields as civic infrastructure for learning. The upper surface becomes a continuous public landscape — a place to gather, sit, watch, perform and pass through. Beneath this new geography sits the complementary programme: workshops, classrooms, services and supporting spaces, organised so that the public life above is always informed by the productive life below. The topography itself does the work of mediating scales, sightlines and circulation inside the historic iron envelope, letting the market's openness survive while quietly adding a much denser civic purpose.
Workflow & process
Christian's process moved from understanding to ideation to spatial testing. He worked through the brief, developed early concepts, and used 3D modelling to explore the spatial possibilities of the habitable topography. Gendo then became the instrument for investigating different configurations and scenarios — testing how the upper surface and the spaces below could co-exist under different uses, lighting conditions and atmospheres. As a daily Gendo user professionally, the tool slotted into his existing rhythm rather than disrupting it.
Interview
Q: Was this your first time using Gendo, and how has your relationship with it evolved?
I'm a regular user — I literally use it every day, and many people where I work use it too. The tool has become indispensable.
Q: What did the result mean to you — and what would you do differently next time?
Excited by the result. Next time I would spend a little more time and show more of the process behind the work — how I think, the decisions I take, the sketches and references I gather along the way.
Q: In your own words, what was it like to compete in Gendo 48?
It was challenging — pure adrenaline. You don't have much time and you have to think, design, iterate, make decisions and execute. But all of that reinforces the potential of the tool.
Key takeaways
Christian's entry shows what happens when an experienced daily user puts a clear conceptual idea through the canvas. The topography reads cleanly, the programme is legible, and the community vote reflected a proposal that felt both ambitious and genuinely civic. A reminder that the strongest AI workflows are the ones built into everyday practice, not bolted on for special occasions.