Saw something at the new city hall build that made me stop and take a picture

I was walking past the new city hall site in Tacoma yesterday (you know, the big glass and wood job on Pacific Ave) and they had a section of the timber frame skeleton up. What caught my eye was the joinery on one of the main posts. It looked like a standard mortise and tenon, but they had cut the shoulder on the tenon at a weird angle, maybe 5 degrees off square. It wasn't a scribed fit for an odd angle, the post was plumb and the beam was level. I've been staring at my photo for ten minutes trying to figure out the structural reason for it, and I can't. It just looks like a mistake that's now buried in the frame. Has anyone run into a weird joinery choice like that on a big commercial job? I'm wondering if it's some new seismic thing I haven't heard of, or just a Friday afternoon cut.

3 comments

3 Comments

brooke_taylor9d ago

That reminds me of a weird thing I saw on a museum job once. They had these huge laminated beams with these little half-moon cutouts on the bottom edge, like someone took a cookie cutter to them. No one on site knew why, and the foreman just shrugged and said the architect's detail called for "aesthetic relief cuts." Looked like a mistake that got a fancy name to me lol.

robinp898d agoMost Upvoted

Seriously? They just carved random holes in structural beams for fun?

jessem598d agoTop Commenter

That "aesthetic relief cuts" thing Brooke mentioned is everywhere now. Like @robinp89 said, it's just random stuff getting a pass because it looks cool. Feels like function takes a back seat a lot these days, you know?