Cascading Loom Exchange
A freestanding wool-trading and weaving cooperative from an imagined rationalist-fractal city in a dry high Himalayan valley, on flat ground. A broad low industrial building has seven adjoining east-west roof bays: one tall central sawtooth hall, one medium-height bay on each side of it, and two smaller bays beyond each medium bay. Across the north-south section their heights read small, small, medium, tall, medium, small, small. The tall central bay is longest east-west; medium bays are shorter and outer small bays shorter again, so the plan also steps inward at both ends and the overall volume resembles a spreading serrated fan. Repeated smaller sawtooth ventilator caps sit on the medium and tall bays, making a second scale of roof recursion.
Each sawtooth has a glazed vertical face looking north and an opaque silver-gray folded-metal plane sloping down toward the south, with exposed dark steel end trusses, grounded columns, valley gutters and external downpipes. The lower walls use rough gray stone with timber and corrugated-metal infill above. All occupied halls are fully enclosed beneath complete roofs.
The south elevation opens onto a shallow exterior loading and trading court bordered by short projecting end wings. Its shop entrances use receding square timber portal frames painted chalk-white on the outer face and muted ochre in the reveals, with smaller square notches at the upper corners. Glazed shopfronts, wool bales tucked inside covered thresholds and durable stone doorsteps communicate the function. East and west elevations display the seven decreasing roof profiles, dark diagonal steel bracing and high workshop windows. The north rear has a wide timber loading door, small service windows, metal rainwater pipes and a low covered storage strip. Keep construction practical and repeatable, with visibly bolted joints and patched cladding; the extraordinary character comes from nested roof scales and diminishing spans.