Maple St. Construct is a gallery and workshop located in the historic Downtown Benson Strip in the heart of the Benson Creative District in Omaha, Nebraska. The masonry building was originally constructed in 1912. In 1922 it served as a store for Modern Electric Co., from 1923-1924 it served as a grocery store for Jacob Eisen, from 1927-1982 it served as an auto parts store and service station for the P.A. Clark Auto Supply Co., and from 1982-1992 it served as an auto supply store and sports card and memorabilia store for CR's Auto Supply. Later, it became an artist’s painting studio and an office space for several architects. The space has been continually transforming and adapting for the uses of its occupants over the last 30+ years.
The design of the space is viewed as a canvas, with architectural interventions that are both additive and subtractive. As a painter one speaks about washes, transparency, layers, and textures. The result is something that emerges from a rigorous process of constant evaluations of marks made on the canvas.
Through such collage of additive and subtractive interventions of time and contextual re-organization, the space is an exercise in scraping away and revealing of what was already there. An architecture that gracefully brings attention to things that were long overlooked, a collage of parts that generate new meanings from old convictions. This can be seen through the layers of paint stripped away from the walls. This can be felt from the nuanced plywood sheets seemingly placed along a haphazard floor. Only to force the inhabitant to give attention to the joints between the modular sheets. It’s those joints that reveal the original floor joists. A space that requires such attention, to not miss the quiet almost mistakable architecture that tries to weave in and out of a built context so heavy with time that the architecture moving within it might be lost at any moment.
The building has gone from a storefront to an artist’s painting studio to office space and now to its current program as a gallery and workshop. A space left void for the construction of ideas from multiple contexts to promote discourse for design and making stuff.
The design of the space is viewed as a canvas, with architectural interventions that are both additive and subtractive. As a painter one speaks about washes, transparency, layers, and textures. The result is something that emerges from a rigorous process of constant evaluations of marks made on the canvas.
Through such collage of additive and subtractive interventions of time and contextual re-organization, the space is an exercise in scraping away and revealing of what was already there. An architecture that gracefully brings attention to things that were long overlooked, a collage of parts that generate new meanings from old convictions. This can be seen through the layers of paint stripped away from the walls. This can be felt from the nuanced plywood sheets seemingly placed along a haphazard floor. Only to force the inhabitant to give attention to the joints between the modular sheets. It’s those joints that reveal the original floor joists. A space that requires such attention, to not miss the quiet almost mistakable architecture that tries to weave in and out of a built context so heavy with time that the architecture moving within it might be lost at any moment.
The building has gone from a storefront to an artist’s painting studio to office space and now to its current program as a gallery and workshop. A space left void for the construction of ideas from multiple contexts to promote discourse for design and making stuff.
Images Courtesy of Ross Miller