steel

Bao Steel #2, Edward Burtynsky 2005


i'm drawn to industrial scapes, though and because i have never worked at one, have never designed one, and have never visited one (unless you count Alco scrap yard ... and i don't think it counts). when i was in college i wondered what it would take to become a factory architect, but of course, they don't really do that, do they? (one of the projects in Shanghai was a tobacco factory -- but you get an engineer to design those crazy pipes and barrels). so love-ly movement, like when you pass through the Maze in Oakland, and are surrounded by startling concrete overpasses passing over passes and more concrete, you realize that these beautiful dynamic things, such as freeways and factories, are not an architect's work, but partly pure function. (even though they might be the most miscalculated functions ...)

when you drive up I-80 from the bay, or take the amtrak on the coastal line, you pass by these strange vats and tubes and pipes emitting lights, steam, clouds near richmond, and shortly after, you pass through this cliffside area by crockett beneath the bridge that crosses to vallejo, a cluster of enormous defunct sugar refineries, and you can still hear the hum of machines churning but no one you ask can tell you what is still being made at these places.