Olympic Mills Commerce Center was a cereal mill erected in the 1920s with an eight-story concrete grain elevator and a full city block floor plate at the lower three floors. Careful consideration was given to the nature of the frame and liner that made up the historic grain tower. An architecture of discreet interventions was adopted. The primary intervention perforated the base with four interior courtyards. The extracted wood was remilled to construct the two-story courtyard screens. The harp guardrail was created by a series of pipes threaded uninhibited through the full eight-story tower. Contained within the tower’s concrete structural bays were wood grain cribs extending up through multiple floors. In 2005, the building was purchased and seismically upgraded to allow for new uses. The large format of the lower plates allowed for a micro-urban environment to be created by utilizing a vocabulary embedded in the historic structure. The crib-like construction of the courtyards, inserted into the relatively uniform grid, imbues the large structure with a connected armature of public spaces that help to organize the private suites. The result of this planning offers an experience not unlike the meandering path through a larger city: discovery of small scale businesses punctuated by daylit open space.
Photos by Stephen A. Miller & W.PA
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