Revival Of The Silo

This project conveys the strongest ideas for redesigning the site as an innovative and thought-provoking space for artists. The proposal wraps the silo in a ring of cellular studio spaces, using the geometry of the silo to establish complex relationships among artists, artworks, and visitors. Large apertures in the exterior wall place artists on display to sidewalk viewers; and artists, meanwhile, can observe the city in full view. Through smaller and more intimate oblique openings within the inner wall, there is a reversal in perspective, as those visitors of the exhibition space inside the silo are placed on display to the artist.

Entry and threshold are defining for this project. One arrives at the silo from below, via a descending ramp which cuts through the water of the flooded site. He leaves the city behind him as he makes his way through an underground tunnel – a moment of spatial compression – and ascends a circular staircase to emerge into a completely new environment. The interior space of the silo is open to the sky, and the treatment of the inner circular wall, with its constellation of apertures, contrasts with the structure as it is seen from the outside. A wonderful experiment challenging concepts of ‘the observer’ versus ‘the observed’, the use of perspective, and the multiple views of the world as it is seen though the eye of the artist.

A strong and convincing gesture is made by this proposal for clearing the site of its secondary buildings. The move gives the silo a theatrical presence within the city fabric, augmented by flooding the site with water, thereby re-creating the silo as an island with multiple bridge-like connections to the surrounding streets.

The space within the silo has been filled in with an arrangement of box-form artist’s studios, workshops, and classrooms. The industrial quality of the existing concrete silo is set in contrast with – and enriched by – the clean, white forms of these new, rectangular blocks. The blocks are organized to spiral around a central open space in a way that is rather free-form, so as to provide opportunities for a variety of internal open spaces. The new structures penetrate the perimeter wall of the silo in a way that eases the tension between the circle and the boxes, distinguishes them from the silo and from each other, and upholds the silo as the site’s most important feature.

The silo is overlaid with a second, organic ‘ribbon’ envelope, and the interface between the two forms presents an unique array of interior and exterior spaces for a range of program types, both public and private. In plan, the geometry of the circle is enhanced by the free-form second envelope, as well as the fluid arrangement of its structural columns – a well-done hierarchical move that places importance on the existing silo. Compositionally, the arrangement of the new complex is harmonious with the water and the existing buildings, with the fluid shape of the ribbon extending to the form of the pond as well as, in elevation, to the building’s roofline.