Elevators are great buildings. They look cool, but they also have this huge tall space inside. Unfortunately, with changes in agriculture, they aren’t as useful as grain storage facilities as they once were. A lot of people are always talking about alternative uses for them, because it’s such a shame when structurally sound elevators are torn down.
The ideas that I’ve heard include turning them into museums or putting a restaurants up top. The museum one is obvious, and it has happened (at least in Inglis). I don’t know if any of the restaurant proposals have actually happened.
There’s one idea that’s been clunking around in my head for a while, but I’ve not yet seen it mentioned anywhere else. I think an elevator would make a great rock climbing facility. A lot of climbing walls are put into normal sized buildings, which means they aren’t very tall or explorable like a real rock face would be. But, an elevator would allow the creation of some truly awesome walls both inside and out.
The really interesting part is that on the inside, in addition to being all-season and all-weather, it might be possible to make the walls easily movable. Most of the climbing walls I’ve seen (an admittedly small quantity) are static except for the movable holds, but I think it would be cool if you could also move the wall portions. I think the structure of an elevator lends itself to that kind of reconfiguration because there are so many different ways to build supports.
(Note to self: Google this.)
This entry was written by the proprietor, posted on 15 August 2004 at 8:10 pm.
Idea for a Grain Elevator Adaptation
Elevators are great buildings. They look cool, but they also have this huge tall space inside. Unfortunately, with changes in agriculture, they aren’t as useful as grain storage facilities as they once were. A lot of people are always talking about alternative uses for them, because it’s such a shame when structurally sound elevators are torn down.
The ideas that I’ve heard include turning them into museums or putting a restaurants up top. The museum one is obvious, and it has happened (at least in Inglis). I don’t know if any of the restaurant proposals have actually happened.
There’s one idea that’s been clunking around in my head for a while, but I’ve not yet seen it mentioned anywhere else. I think an elevator would make a great rock climbing facility. A lot of climbing walls are put into normal sized buildings, which means they aren’t very tall or explorable like a real rock face would be. But, an elevator would allow the creation of some truly awesome walls both inside and out.
The really interesting part is that on the inside, in addition to being all-season and all-weather, it might be possible to make the walls easily movable. Most of the climbing walls I’ve seen (an admittedly small quantity) are static except for the movable holds, but I think it would be cool if you could also move the wall portions. I think the structure of an elevator lends itself to that kind of reconfiguration because there are so many different ways to build supports.
(Note to self: Google this.)
This entry was written by the proprietor, posted on 15 August 2004 at 8:10 pm.
Filed under Commentary Unbound and tagged architecture, grain elevator, manitoba.
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