ELEVATOR OUTBACK
WHITE > BROWN > GREEN
"In America, the Motherland of Industry … the compelling monumentality of the Canadian and South American grain elevators, the coaling bunkers built for the leading railway companies and the newest work halls of the great North American industrial trusts can almost bear comparison with the work of the ancient Egyptians in their overwhelming monumental power (…) American builders have retained a natural feeling for large compact forms fresh and intact."
-WALTER GROPIUS
-Ibid., p. 202. Banham attributes this move to Gropius’ readings of Wilhelm Worringer and Alois Reigl.
Regionalism to me comes in the form of monument. A tribute to the middle-of-America, blue collar wearing, back breakin', working man. The monument itself in this case is literally encapsulating what blankets 90% of the region for 5 months a year.
The Monument is a bank, it stores the years economy as well as it's food production. Not only do they stand as symbols of great regional influence but also exist purely for function. There is no hierarchical precedents to its design tied to user or 'region'. They exist to store and preserve.
Very fascinating. I will say there's something magical about standing on a farm (I've driven through SD with Emily exactly once) any looking out on the fields. This vast landscape populated by these monuments. It makes you thing of the sheer amount of space required to feed a nation. These things are pure regionalism at it's finest. They respond to the requirement to act as banks, but also to withstand the onslaught of a northern winter. They also respond to the requirements to be an economical structure in the landscape of the slim margins that exist in farming. So they are molded by all these forces into the perfect monument of an American landscape.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you showed two different examples of these things. I think it does a good job of showing that with critical regionalism its not simply about an aesthetic style, but achieving the needs of the area. Its natural then for the form of the grain silos to morph over time as technology and material changes.
ReplyDeleteYou Midwest guys are intriguing. Russel and I have talked about the region in various instances. I think that there is a sense of regionalism all over the world, and these displays can be found by simply driving from state to state.
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