Plant 4 Bowden

Plant 4 Bowden was built in 1963 as a Clipsal electrical goods factory and extended more than once as the business grew. It sat empty from 2009 until the Ceres Market Shed Group took on the building around six years later, converting a vacant industrial shed into one of Adelaide's more distinctive market and eatery precincts.

A factory that earned a 5 Green Star rating

Rather than a knockdown rebuild, the 2,818-square-metre warehouse went through an extensive green retrofit with support from Renewal SA, earning a 5 Green Star rating in the process. The original saw-tooth roof and exposed brick walls stayed, built at a time before air-conditioning was standard: the double-brick facade gives real thermal mass, and the roofline floods the space with natural light and airflow.

Electrical goods have given way entirely to specialty eateries and market stalls, and the atmosphere reviewers describe leans toward the hipster end of Adelaide's food scene, with gozleme and donut stalls sitting inside what used to be a manufacturing hall. It's paired with a sister building, Plant 3, on the same former Clipsal site.

Good to know before you go

The eateries generally run longer hours than the market stalls, so a visit purely for the market side is worth timing against the live hours panel here. The industrial architecture is worth a slow look on its own, regardless of what's trading that day.