Terrain Vague: Philadelphia Granary

Tom Soldiviero (website), Matt Foley
The Catholic University of America
ARPL601 Urban Practice Studio
Faculty: Julie Ju-Youn Kim, Eric Jenkins (website), Mark McInturff (website)
2014   

Our project explores ways in which we can intervene in the urban fabric. Cities, such as Philadelphia, have experienced urban decay as a result of economic struggles, a fading dependence on the automobile, and a population surge in the past decades. Our proposal converts an existing and abandoned building, a granary with eighty-two square silos, into a museum of industrial art. The building, which once acted as a vertical sifting tool, suffers from extreme spatial separations as a result of the silos dense configuration: inhabitable space above and below the silos. The silos are perceived as a solid mass that divides the building into two. We begin to carve into the silos, creating spaces which become the museum’s galleries. In order to allow for vertical movement, a circulation core sits separate from the existing structure and houses the museum’s elevators and stairs, acting as a purely functional tool. The juxtaposition of the two interdependent buildings allows for an abandoned structure to be re-used for a completely different function.