With El Dorado’s in-house steel fabrication capabilities (incl. structural steel) combined with concurrent explorations on a new manufacturing facility in San Francisco, heavy timber mockups were created as a structural framing approach. Working closely with local engineers, El Dorado explored both a ‘covered joint’ approach and ‘exposed bracketry’ approach for the steel connector joints. Given the relatively intimate scale of a proposed workspace, as well as the impressive scale and craft of the ‘exposed bracketry’ approach it became the preferred approach. El Dorado designed and prototyped two different bracket conditions, giving everyone involved a much more illustrative visual accounting of an important detail, which in turn allowed a more nuanced conversation about the pro’s and con’s of each approach.