"They say dreams are the windows of the soul — take a peek and you can see the inner workings, the nuts and bolts."
Henry Brommel

Though Autodesk has offices worldwide, I work at our office at One Market in San Francisco. I currently work on the second floor, which happens to also be the location of the Autodesk Gallery, but in the past I have also worked on the fifth and fourth floors. Recently as part of exapnding our space in San Francisco, we leased space on the fourth floor of an adjacent building. To make it easier for employees in the two buildings to collaborate, a portal to connect the two fourth floors was constructed.

Imagine our surprise when the construction team unearthed a window that was not suppsoed to be there. According to the architectural drawings, this window did not exist.

We felt that this architectural detail provided a window to the past. Rather than replace the widnow, we covered with a blast-proof pane of glass that meets current fire codes.

On close inspection we could see that the window was afixed with metal plates as a sign of pride in its craftsmanship.

The two metal plates read:

• FIRE PROOF WINDOW
  MADE BY FOREVER CORNICE WKS
  SAN FRANCISCO

• UNDERWRITERS LABORATORIES
  FIRE WINDOW BRAKE
  7074

Historical preservation is alive in the lab.