Hulking, imposing, and utilitarian, silos are an enduring urban feature, structures typically used for the storage of materials in bulk. They are important physical elements of the agricultural industry, storing grain, fermented feed, and other foodstuffs. These tall, typically cylindrical forms remain the subject of architectural fascination — from being symbols of technological progress for Modernist architectural figures of the early 20th century, to in contemporary times, instigating inventive approaches to adaptive reuse.
The Modernist architectural enthrallment with silos — grain silos in particular — is present in the oeuvre of what was termed as the architectural vanguard of the time, including, but not limited to, the likes of Le Corbusier, Moisei Ginzburg, Reyner Banham, and Walter Gropius. Photographs were one avenue for communicating this captivation, Walter Gropius published in a 1913 craftsmen journal photographs of the many grain elevators of Buffalo in New York. Le Corbusier’s 1923 mass-production oriented text Towards an Architecture features mention and illustration of them, and in the Soviet constructivist architect Moisei Ginzburg’s The International Front of Modern Architecture, silos are described in admiring terms — as part of an architectural language powerful in expression and magnitude.
