Marine 'A' Grain Elevator buffaloah.com |
Those of you in the United States, it is (Re) Election Day and if you have not done so, go out and vote. After you cast your vote, pat yourself on the back for doing your civic duty, pour yourself the beverage of your choice, sit down and read today's post on Modernist inspired industrial building being put back to work.
We love modernist buildings for their radical departure from the tyranny of academic period styles, their innovative use of industrial material, and they way their form follows function. However, Miriam Kelly in her article, "Following Function: Putting the Industrial Buildings that inspired Modernist Movement Back to Work" for Docomomo-US, points out that the industrial buildings that inspired architects such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies Van de Rohe are not quite as celebrated. In digital age, these buildings face the same challenges as America's former industrial sites. Ms. Kelly considers three examples featured prominently in Le Corbusier's seminal book Vers une Architecture (1923), taking into account their importance, as understood today and how adaptive reuse can secure their future.
Brooklyn Army Terminal Cass Gilbert Michelle Young untappedcities.com |
Aerial view of the Brooklyn Army Terminal retrosnapshots.com |
Arcades at Brooklyn Army Terminal benheimer.com |
Typically, warehouses were built quickly during wartime, yet they were intended to last in anticipation of conversion to peacetime activities thus all local building codes were used. The interiors were designed for more versatile combinations of space, making them ready for contemporary mixed-usage. At present, over 100 companies and 3,000 workers occupy the Army Terminal, all encouraged by tax and business incentives. Ms. Kelly writes, "By establishing a critical mass of light manufacturing and business activities, the continued uses of the Brooklyn Army Terminal is seeding much-needed economic growth in one the city's most down-at-heel former industrial neighborhoods." The Brooklyn Army Terminal was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983; its potential as an engine for economic regeneration, not its cultural heritage has insured its survival. Ms. Kelly adds, "Its innovative, monumental construction and inclusion in modernism's most influential manifesto privileges the Brooklyn Army Terminal in the American industrial vernacular. However, its significance as an icon of twentieth century design has yet to be fully celebrated."
The Grain Elevator buffalohistoryworks.com |
The City of Buffalo, New York was once the focus of trans-continental grain shipment. By 1858, it was already known as the "the great gate of Cereal," on its way to becoming the the world's largest grain port. The painstakingly slow manual process of transferring the grain between ships and smaller canal vessels was revolutionize by local businessman Joseph Dart in 1842. Joseph Dart developed a bucket elevator system that scooped up the grain from the boats into vertical bins, using a steam powered conveyor belt, giving birth to the grain elevator.
The silo skyline had both an aesthetic and technological affect on Buffalo. Pictures taken of the grain elevators incorporated examples that were immensely influential on the European avant-garde when they were published in Walter Gropius in Jahrbuch des Deutschen Werkbundes (1913). They were reproduced in Le Corbusier's book (First Reminder to Architects: Volume) and lauded as "the magnificent fruits of the new age." German architect Bruno Taut feature the photographs in his 1929 book Modern Architecture, making the Buffalo Concrete Central elevator part of the visual vocabulary. After sketching the 1913 photographs, Erich Mendelsohn visited the city in 1924, specifically to document the grain elevators. Miriam Kelly remarks, "Remarkably, he was the only European early modernist to see the buildings first hand."
Grain being lowered into a ship's hold buffaloah.com |
Mountainous silos, incredibly space-conscious, but creating space. A random confusion amidst the chaos of loading and unloading...of railways and bridges, crane monsters with live gestures, hordes of silo cells in concrete, stone and glazed brick. Then suddenly a silo administrative buildings, closed horizontal fronts against the stupendous verticals of fifty to a hundred cylinders, and all this in the sharp evening light...Everything else so far now seem to have been shaped interim to my silo dreams.
In contemporary times, the grain elevators make the very collection of American extant grain elevators; collectively composed of a variety of material, building typologies, and technical innovations that irrevocably changed the manner in which grain is handled. Unfortunately, a small number of sites have been razed. However, nearly twenty elevators from the final years of the nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries survived the collapse of the Great Lake grain trade. Most of the silos sit abandoned while a few are still used to handle grain. All in all, the silo form an amazing part of the landscape, creating a beautiful, vertical, sculptural group along the Buffalo River.
Watch boat along Elevator Alley buffalorising.com |
Ford Motor Company Detroit, Michigan commons.wikimedia.org |
The collapse of the automobile industrial, racial strife, the abandonment of the historic core, rapid suburbanization, and land erosion have resulted in a landscape unable to adapt to the type of innovation is so desperately needs. With about forty square miles of available plots and one third of the buildings abandoned, available space is both an asset and liability to the city. To deal with the long term economic revival of the city, a report
Detroit Future City Strategic Framework, was released to the general public. The DFC Strategic Framework is an extremely detailed long term outline for decision making by Detroit stakeholders. (http://www.detroitfuturecity.com) Ms. Kelly writes, "A key proposal in Detroit Future City... (published in January 2013) is a twenty year framework for consolidating the redundant land of Motor City into a 'canvas of green.' The former...of a new connective landscape is an affordable response to rationalizing the city's infrastructure, redefining neighborhoods, remediating industrial food contamination and producing food.
The Packard Plant, 1954 Albert Kahn Photography by Hugo90 blog.hemmings.com |
As cultural attitudes and conservation strategies towards modernist buildings become well defined, the scholarship surrounding the reading of industrial buildings, which inspired the modern movement, has further to go. Together with renewed appreciation of industrial buildings as 'heritage,' Ms. Kelly reports, "...some progress is being made to protect America's historic industrial sites. However, important structures remain at risk without proper recognition of their contribution to modernism or as extraordinary buildings in their own right." Many of this buildings endure simply because it costs too much and too time consuming to demolish them. This can actually work to their advantage by making these industrial buildings suitable for adaptive reuse. Post-modernist scholarship revealed Le Corbusier's grain elevator as evidence of the importance of symbolism and image over function. Thus, the conversion to a post-industrial landscape, recognition of their importance, and their adaptive reuse are extremely necessary for the future of these buildings.
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