Photo courtesy of Perkins + Will
You'd probably never guess what the inside of that building above looks like.
As it says on the side, that's the Fulton Market Cold Storage Company, essentially a ten-storey freezer that opened in Chicago's Meatpacking district in the 1920s. The company recently picked up stakes for a new facility out in the 'burbs, and the Meatpacking space has been sold for development.
Architecture firm Perkins + Will, who are turning two of the storeys into a velodrome, machine shop and workspace for bicycle component manufacturer SRAM, have posted some astonishing photographs of the interior. "Before work could start on the makeover," writes Edible Geography, "the building had to be defrosted. Nine decades of cold storage, combined with a lack of maintenance as the building ran at one-third capacity over the last five years, had left its interior encrusted with ice."
As the developers brought in a series of propane heaters and began cranking them up, here's what happened:
Photo by Gary Robert
Photo by Gary Robert
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