Silo City
Silo City
Buffalo, NY
“I’ll never finish it. I’m just trying to leave it better than I found it.”
— Rick Smith, Silo City
The spit of land between the Buffalo River and Lake Erie was once the epicenter of the largest grain port on the North American continent. Grain was transported to Buffalo from across the Great Lakes region, requiring storage for quantities that inspired structural and industrial innovation. Over the course of the 20th century, the iconic concrete silos sited along the meandering banks of the Buffalo have long captivated the imaginations of architects and artists. Patterns of grain transport and processing have since shifted, leaving Buffalo with only a small footprint of active grain industry. In its wake, the Silo City organization has worked since 2012 to reimagine these post-industrial structures and landscape as a unique cultural space that promotes creativity, community, and environmental stewardship.
Unknown Studio was commissioned to deliver on two goals for Silo City: a vision for improved connectivity to the greater Niagara region and a phaseable, immersive, and poetic design for inviting guests into the silos and the site.
To better connect Buffalo to its waterfront, the plan articulates multi-modal and active transportation routes between Buffalo’s First Ward, Downtown neighborhoods and the recreational and cultural assets on the waterfront. Unknown Studio created maps and visualizations to make the argument for these connections and to identify potential partners and collaborators.
At the scale of the site, Unknown Studio provided concept design to imagine Silo City as a site for daily recreation, learning, creativity and exploration. As a post-industrial landscape, the site is unlikely to be wholly redesigned; instead the project team suggests a light touch involving stewardship, habitat creation, and a slow collaboration with nature. On the building scale, the site faces major challenges in the form of flooding, aggressive invasive species, and industrial contamination. The design team focused on the “Marine A Elevator” and its surrounds as the primary site for continuing Silo City’s legacy of innovation, spectacle, and welcome.
Project timeline: 2022 -
Client: Silo City
Scope: Feasibility Study, Concept Design, Planning
Project Type: Waterfront | Culture | Park | Urban | Campus
Size: 15.5 acres
Partners: Site Office (Lead Consultant)
