The goal of our project is to highlight the beauty of Cleveland's many hundreds of factories, particularly the ones built in the period from the mid nineteenth century to the 1930s and 40s. Many are still active workplaces, but many it seems are in danger of being lost.

Wherever one is in the city one is never far from an industrial workplace--a tool and die, plating, wire, gasket, fittings or some other form of manufacturing. It turns out that formal elements of these concerns, from the humble metal shop to today's Mittal Steel, has had a tremendous influence on the course of architecture in the twentieth century. One of the most important structural designers of that era, Le Corbusier, celebrated them in his landmark publication Towards a New Architecture, published in 1923. In it he lauded the engineers who designed American factories the likes of which one finds everywhere in Cleveland, arguing that architects around the world had much to learn from them. These structures went on to be the most important models for modern architecture, which came to be known, already in the 1930s, as the International Style. American factories, the kind one finds on so many street corners and sees everywhere from highways across Cleveland, became the inspiration for entire landscapes, including arguably the most significant modernist landscape in America: Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 53rd Streets in New York City.

Despite all the economic, demographic, political and other changes that have affected the lives of Clevelanders in the past century, the factories themselves not only continue to serve as places of employment but stand as a collective witness to a significant era in American history. Athens and Rome have their ancient ruins; Florence its Renaissance structures; Paris its cafes; Amsterdam its windmills--while Cleveland has its factories. Sadly, many of them have become derelict from neglect and even criminal abuse (cf. the once-majestic Monarch Aluminum on Detroit and W. 89th Street) while most, if not all, of the rest are woefully underappreciated.

Our project seeks to remedy that situation by locating in the factories the original simplicity of their design--their aesthetic quality--that inspired architects around the world. Sometimes, living so closely to a thing, one can take it for granted; one can fail to recognize its beauty (that was Andy Warhol's point when he created his enormous Brillo-Box sculptures and his silk screens of S&H Green Stamps). What we're trying to do is find not just the beauty in their design but to show that, when taken together, Cleveland possesses a treasure trove of industrial and architectural design, one that should be genuinely appreciated and celebrated, even exploited in the way other cities recognize and exploit what it is that makes them unique.