Metrix X
Central Auto
I am a sap for industrial architecture that’s a wee bit past its prime. Show me a muffler shop built in the 1950s or a retail radiator repair business that’s been operating out of the same structure since 1972, and I’m a happy boy. These buildings have been grizzled with experience and use. There’s not much grace in them, nor anything like a traditional notion of beauty. Any attempt at cosmetics is essentially futile; you can paint over the abuse, but you can’t eradicate the scars of hard use.
It’s the hard use that draws me. It’s the utilitarian abuse that gives these older buildings character. There’s nothing deliberate about it; nobody tries to gives these structures interesting scars — they just happen. It’s that matter-of-fact acceptance that shit will happen, that things will get banged up, that some amount of damage is unavoidable in daily life — that’s what makes them beautiful and noble. Life takes its shots at you — some you dodge, some you don’t — but so long as you’re still standing and doing what you’re meant to do, you can keep going on.
There’s a little bit of Central Auto in all of us.
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