The industrial window makes a comeback in residential design

Alex Bozikovic, The Globe and Mail
November 27, 2013

Over the past decade, residential design has been undergoing an industrial revolution. The sewing stool, the weathered workbench, exposed concrete floors – these features have showed up everywhere, not just in converted lofts, but also in new condos and suburban houses.

Now architects and designers are employing a new tool: the industrial window. Framed in black steel, divided into a grid of rectangular lights, such windows are borrowed from the factories of the early 20th century. And now, as that era fades into history, some of us are choosing to recall it in the design of our homes.

In an age of laptops, spreadsheets and telecommuting, the idea of real work – the kind of work our grandfathers did, with tools and hot steel and hunks of wood, the kind that today’s professionals have never done – has an attractive tang of nostalgia. More…