george's hardware - renovation
Location : west palm beach, FL
Area : 7704 sf
Phase : RENOVATION UNDER CONSTRUCTION
George’s Hardware Store has been an iconic store in West Palm Beach since 1939. Today the use of the hardware store has changed due to the current business needs of downtown West Palm Beach and Georges hardware has moved to a less dense industrial area.
The project needed to be budget conscious so that meant looking into the existing store and preserving as mush of the original structure as possible.Early in the project the building most dominant features were identified and cataloged so that the new design could be synthesized into a new construct that did not forget the original common elements that made the building so iconic for so many years.
Special care was taken to ensure that these elements were maintained and upgraded into the new uses. The preservation of the building was key to the entire renovation. The original building has a simple open floor plate design with a concrete curved canopy on its façade and columns that follow into an orthogonal grid of 4” steel columns in the interior. The original floors are made of a light terrazzo and are being preserved as part of the renovations.
The idea of the renovation was to preserve the simplicity if the building elements while preparing the building for its new uses essentially breathing new life into the iconic structure.