Just a few images from traversing the edges of my site today... there is a great amount of very interesting information regarding current site conditions and the conditions of the surrounding areas. The first image shows the Reading 'Subway' where the city's traffic moves underneath one of the central portions of the site. On either side, Spring street climbs steeply up the east and west sides of Reading, while the level of the railyard is continued out to meet the slope of Spring Street. This could serve some potential for where the current state of the city meets the former state of the city.The second image shows the massive locomotive repair shops from the Reading Yard. The complex of buildings forms (or used to form) one large building stretching the better part of four city blocks and was connected between with a large crane and boom. It is indeed the largest structure left on the site from the former railroad, and is a fantastic expression of architecture from industrial America.
The third and fourth images are more like metaphors, rather testaments to the current state of the site. The third is the column of a bridge carrying the tracks over part of the city, where the concrete has worn away exposing the hundred or so year-old re-bar. The fourth image is an old mill adjacent to the site that was turned into part of the Reading Outlet Center, which has since been shut down and is now being slowly pulled apart. Most of the windows are pulled out and the doors are nailed and boarded shut in their vacant state.
Another detail of the site are the keystone-less archways of the bridges surrounding the site. The 'newer' structures (without keystones) have replaced the older ones constructed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, due to their inability to prevent sway from the immense weight of the engines and cars above. In order to support the wright, the stones on the inside face of the arch not only curved to form the arch, but were angled to the weights from above to the ground.
More images and posts to follow soon.
3 comments:
A-
great pics, the descending street, the deatils.
I'm interested to see a picture of these bridges.
keystone-less? sounds like an invitation for an intervention...
-A
interesting, the site is very different then i had imagined it, the topography, density and greenery, could you show us more via a flicker style site where you could upload all your pics?
Yes, Adam, the site is different than I had pictured it also. There are powerful shocks in the way the avenue gets sucked under, and the sheer scale of some of those raw building masses. but all is not shock- some pictures are surprisingly, pleasantly domestic- fine trees, old houses, a gentle terrain.
How will you wrap an idea around so much, so big, so diverse? And I don't yet sense you have gotten inside it. Does this force you to the be designer of the perimeter? You do write of Edges, Skins, Cladding, Hiding, Obscuring, Shrouding.
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