Siloed Dreams

"Siloed Dreams": A still from the film, of a grain silo and elevator in Buffalo's "Silo City" district.

The 1825 opening of the Erie Canal established Buffalo as the central point of connection between the developed ports and population centers of the Northeast and the newly-seeded towns and fields of the Midwest. Industries flourished around the transshipment of grain and, in 1842, the first steam-powered grain elevator in the world was constructed on the bank of the Buffalo River. The city's concrete grain silos and daylight factories provided a direct source of inspiration for modernism in Europe, and photographs of Buffalo's grain elevators appeared in the seminal texts of Walter Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn, and Le Corbusier. While changes in transportation patterns in the mid-twentieth century led to the gradual abandonment of the silos, they live on as monuments of American ingenuity.

Visions and Works

Architecture students to unveil “Ritual Space,” a new installation at Artpark
5/4/18
Freshman architecture students from the University at Buffalo are ready to unveil the wondrous wooden structures they created this semester, which will be on display at Artpark in Lewiston, New York.
Sculptural Wall Made from Local Materials Wins International Prize
11/11/13
Architecture faculty members Nicholas Bruscia and Nicholas Bruscia have won an international competition with their proposal to build a wall from panels of super-thin steel folded into wild geometric patterns.
When doing nothing is doing something: Sean Burkholder, assistant professor of landscape and urban design
10/14/21
UB Landscape designer Sean Burkholder leaves room for a new 'urban ecology' along the edge of te Great Lakes Basin
Bee Dwelling Wins International Architecture Award
3/21/13
Elevator B, a honeycomb-themed tower housing bees on Buffalo’s waterfront designed and built by five architecture students, has won a highly regarded international architecture award.
A new perspective on Buffalo's grain elevators
5/5/17
The collection of grain elevators at Silo City is an impressive enough site, the industrial behemoths towering over the Buffalo River. But a project created by UB freshman architecture students this spring lends a unique perspective to the grain elevators, and the landscape.
Uncovering cultural landscapes
10/14/21
Urban planning students have assumed an almost investigative role as they explore two of Buffalo’s most historically significant — and hidden — landscapes: the Buffalo Belt Line, a former passenger rail line that loops the city almost unnoticed; and the Scajaquada Creek, a largely buried 13-mile stream whose shores trace the evolution of Buffalo.

Siloed Dreams

Visions and Works

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