Holes

I'm working with an architect one day a week on Fridays. He's doing a project design/building a bike retail space as part of the adaption of an old brick machine shop in Ballard. I appreciate that they're highlighting the textures of the building's previous existence in their approach. Crumbling brick walls with wood window frames cut into them, the windows bricked over, a 12' long wood window sash with several broken panes used in an interior partition, fir flooring with scattered holes drilled in it, stained with oil.

To install the earthquake retrofitting, they just cut holes through the floors of all the levels successively and slide giant steel I-beams and cross-bracing through them. The structural system is insinuated into the already standing building and simply tacked on with brackets and bolts. Making the rest of the building just a skin, something that hangs on the steel members. Between these holes, the unintended holes through the interior brick walls, the bricked over fenestrations of the exterior walls, and the holes drilled through the wood floor, I composed a little series.