Render

A patch of wall at Shimizusawa Thermal Power Plant where the render has fallen away to expose the brick beneath. The brickwork is from the original 1926 build. The bricks are reddish-orange, laid in a regular stretcher bond, the mortar lines still tight after almost a hundred Hokkaido winters. The render that remains around the patch is grey and crazed, peeling at the edges where damp has got in behind it. There's no graffiti, no paint over-spray, no obvious sign of human visit. What the photograph holds is the contrast. Bare brick on one side. Crazed render on the other.

Most of the Shimizusawa plant was rendered over its brickwork at construction. It made the building look more substantial, gave a flat surface for paint and signage, and kept the worst of the Hokkaido weather off the brick. Almost a century on, the render is doing its job in patches and failing in others. Where it has come away, the original Hokutan-era brick is exposed to the air for the first time since the plant was built. It looks much like it did when it was laid: dense, dry, square. The render around it shows what time has done. The brick shows what was here first.