Stan Bullard
Once the home of a leading national maker of horse blankets, the former National Blanket Building on Cleveland’s West Side could be repurposed as affordably priced apartments for families.
“We’re afraid bricks may fall from it,” he said of the three-story factory dating from 1890 that was expanded until it covers a city block. He’s excited, though, because plans to renovate it to new use are taking shape. “It will mean a lot for the neighborhood in terms of morale because it’s the largest building here and it’s been vacant so long,” León said, “in addition to the economic benefit of it being put back into use.”
Source: Rehab/reuse project is warming up for old blanket factory
A pair of surviving rowhomes surrounded by vacant lots at dusk in Baltimore. The city has some 17,000 vacant buildings. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
Budavari and Phil Garboden, a doctoral student in sociology and applied math, are working on a statistical tool to predict abandonment. They’re combining publicly available data with GIS technology to create a database of the city’s housing stock. This will serve as a base to do high-level statistical analyses that can help officials make better, data-driven evaluations of current and future interventions. It could help Baltimore study, among other things, when and why homes are abandoned, and at what point a vacant home starts affecting nearby properties.
Source: Can Big Data Predict Housing Abandonment? – CityLab
BOB PERKOSKI
He’s come full circle with his business, which produces customized furniture made of reclaimed materials in an old elevator factory on East 36th Street. Not only is he finding new uses for goods that would have been thrown away, but he’s revitalizing Cleveland’s manufacturing past.
All Rustbelt Reclamation furniture is made by a crew of about 20 people right in Cleveland. And many of the pieces are created with floorboards harvested from now-closed factories where people who helped build the city, the region and the country once stood and worked.
“Wow, all of that was going to be in the landfill, and now it’s not.'”
via Rustbelt Reclamation brings new life to salvaged materials.
BOB PERKOSKI
Salvaged wood decking from the Columbus Road Bridge acquired by Old School and sand casting forms from Taylor & Boggis Foundry Co. acquired by Rustbelt Reclamation were used to build customized tables at The Corner, the much-anticipated bar at Progressive Field nestled in the stands in right field. Rustbelt Reclamation upcycled the old materials into customized furniture.
BOB PERKOSKI
via Reclaiming pieces from the past.
The 1915 building once was a former tavern house, appropriate for its latest incarnation. Construction will include reclaimed wood from a nearby home that dates to the 1880s. The part of the building that will house the brewery has a barn-like look to it, with high wooden strips forming the rafters. And in a neat homage to the past, bricks were salvaged from a former Forest City Brewery.
via Forest City Brewery embraces history as it sets to open in Cleveland | cleveland.com.
And thanks to the wild success of these exciting projects, other cities around the world are looking at innovative and environmentally friendly ways of reinventing the disused railways of their industrial past. Cleveland’s proposed Red Line Park is one of them.
via Could Cleveland’s Proposed Red Line Trail be the Next Linear Urban Park? | Urban Ghosts |.
Cleveland has just unveiled the world’s first BioCellar, a sustainable agriculture project that’s a smart mix of urban design, architecture, and biology. Built upon the masonry foundation of an abandoned house, the passive greenhouse is a stunning example of how an urban renewal project can bring fresh produce and life to a food desert in a blighted neighborhood.
via BioCellar Turns Abandoned Cleveland House into a Center for Urban Farming | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building.
Do yourself a favor and head on over to A Piece of Cleveland for this morning’s design caffeine. Their eye-popping website is only matched by the beautiful projects it displays.
There is no doubt that the materials reused here are well respected. Every piece comes with a Rebirth Certificate which outlines the origin of the materials.
These folks are Superheros.
We want the things we make to live up to the standards of their materials. We make conference tables, wall panels, desks, bookshelves, chairs and bars, but most of all we make the future out of the past. That’s why every piece comes with a rebirth certificate. You can see our work in the gallery on this site, rebirth certificates and all.
via APOC @ A Piece Of Cleveland.
August 24, 2013 — October 13, 2013
Everything All At Once features four Cleveland-based artists who make sense of the world through restructuring and assembling found materials. These common things– picked up, repainted, repaired, or completely transformed–navigate between the ordered space of the museum and the material jumble of the outside world.
Each of the four artists engage with the emerging cultural and economic “upcycle” of Cleveland, drawing on a grass-roots movement that finds hope in the humorous reinventing of “everything all at once.” Mining detritus from industry and human excess, they generate compelling and resilient new forms.
via Everything All At Once | MOCA Cleveland.
The neglected edifice, known as the Ardmore and built just after the turn of the century, has crumbling ceilings and busted-out windows. The copper pipes were stolen long ago. Graffiti artists tagged the walls. Weeds have taken over outside. It has sat empty for years, just like the building next door, and the one next to that, like thousands of others in Cleveland beset by population loss and a brutal housing crisis.
Recently, the Ardmore received a death sentence. It will be torn down in a matter of days, part of an ongoing effort to demolish vacant and abandoned properties and chip away at blight. But first, Hennessy and his colleagues have a chance to salvage whatever is worth saving.
via From Cleveland’s dilapidated buildings, salvage workers unearth treasures – The Washington Post.
Reclamation Administration: News and Research on Building Material Waste Prevention