Equipment

Throughout the past year at school, I was told over and over again that I focused too much on "the product" and not enough on process or experience. It was a fair and valid point, because that's exactly what I do. In architecture, I'm not sure that's a good thing, but coming from an education in product design, it's a pretty normal thing for me to do.

So in honour of the profs this past year who tried ever so hard to pull me out of my obsession with "things," here are some photos I took with my friend SB. As far as I can tell, this is a small steam plant that would have supplied heat and maybe electricity to the stockyard building nearby.

Sambo

I had forgotten about a meeting/lecture at school today, so a co-worker and fellow architecture student and I went down to the university to hear what our prof had to say. As I entered the school - for the first time since early May - I felt a sense of anxiety. Very real anxiety. But anxiety is nothing new to me. I suppose I just realized that the new schoolyear is coming upon us quickly. But then, I'm a fortunate one. There were people still up in studio working on their projects from last semester. It is very late June. School ended two months ago!

The lecture was really good. It sort of reminded me why I am doing what I'm doing, and to hear it from a different but related and very interesting perspective was great. Part of what made the lecture good was that it validated some of my own interests (it's rare that architects even pay attention to rural issues or rural architecture).

Coincidentally, I went to the library after work yesterday and got a library card. I picked up two books - one about Canadian architecture, and one about Rural Studio. If you're reading this blog, you probably already know about Rural Studio, but if you don't, then you owe it to yourself to find out more about it. Essentially, Rural Studio is doing what I feel I ought to be doing when all is said and done.

Go to Rural Studio's website.

Union Stock Yards

I wasn't going to post today, but my friend SB dropped by unannounced and we went on a long bike ride - more than five hours, I think. SB wanted to check out an abandoned stock yard. So we did.

I don't know much about it, but the stockyard used to be outside of the city, but of course now it's engulfed in the larger metro area. It sits abandoned and neglected.

We went with the intention of just looking around - SB didn't know that I had a blog about rural architecture. When we got there, we found that there were two buildings, and both of them were open. I should probably mention that now - for the sake of clarity, I wouldn't ever break into a place if it was boarded up, locked shut, or even probably had a sticky door. Both buildings were wide open, with not so much as doors to keep people out. So we did what anybody would do - we went inside. I'm glad that SB had remembered a bike light (that we used as a flashlight), otherwise we would have never been able to go inside.

This is part of the front of the first building.....



And this is the back....

This is the basement, and the open room we found out back, obviously destroyed by fire. We saw that the buiding was made from thick, solid concrete (it was a stockyard building, after all). SB is an engineer as well, so I trusted his judgment that the place looked okay to investigate. Safety first!


This is the main stairwell, up on the ground floor. I have another photo that shows everything in a lot more detail and with much better lighting, but I like these atmospheric photos better, and they much better reflect the reality that my eyes don't flash light like my camera. For the first while, this was a very freaky place. I thought ghosts were for sure going to capture our souls.


This is another set of stairs. They were solid concrete and cast iron. Amazing. The iron handrails were basically the only salvageable items in the whole building, but that might be a problem considering that they are cast into the concrete!


This is the hallway you enter when you reach the top of the first set of double stairs. I lied. There was quite a bit of fairly intact wood trim.



More stairs.






This shows about 3/4 of the length of the building. It was big. We investigated most of the rooms.


There were lots and lots of stairs. Every floor had one set of stairs up to a landing, and then two sets up to the next floor. I'm sure it was something to behold when it was brand new. This set is slightly different because it leads up to the roof.


If you stick around this blog for long enough, you'll see that I like to 'frame' the frame. Here's a view out of a window. A long time ago, this is where cows came to die so we could eat delicious beef.


This is the view from the top floor up onto the roof. Nature has taken over. At some point, there was a fire and there's not a whole lot left of the old structure.


This is a view of the roof, complete with mosquito breeding grounds.


And finally, if you look up at the first photo of this post, you'll see an elliptical hole at the top of the building. Here's the view from the other side.