Concrete Expression
To create the permeable pavers for the garden, the crew saw-cut them from a parking area. Hill says that the pavers are part of an adaptive reuse experiment in how to “harvest” interesting material out of existing asphalt and concrete pavement to keep material out of landfills and to maintain a site’s texture and patina.
They tried jackhammering, but had to deal with irregular chunks of concrete. “In this experiment, we tried to emulate techniques employed at stone quarries to carefully saw-cut the concrete into modular units that can be used later for permeable paving.” The interior concrete floor was left as-is, except for trenches dug for the new sewer lines. Prefinished dark-stained bamboo was installed on top of the slab.
Walls Can Talk
Nearly a century of hard living marked the plaster walls, and Hill wanted to retain some of that history by keeping a portion of the wall plastered and marked by its many layers of paint — one visitor pointed out a red glittered section, recalling that it was part of the King Kongo Club where he sang as a teenager in the 1950s.
Hill held a “Plaster Disaster” party and invited his students. He chiseled a line about 10 inches above the three feet of wall he wanted to keep and let students have at it with hammers. They removed about 80% of the plaster, which hardly clung to the brick. Hill and Langston then fine-tuned with a brick chisel and hammer before pressured washing the interior. “We really tried to retain as much character as we could,” Hill says.