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A joint team of Formline, Chevalier Morales, and Montreal’s Architecture49 has revealed its design for a new library project in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The firms say the project is conceived as a “pillar in the reconciliation of Indigenous and Western ways of living and building” that... View full entry
Grain elevators were once an icon of Canada’s west: often painted a bright boxcar red, they stood in towns across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. [...]
In the 1930s there were nearly 6,000 towers; now fewer than a thousand remain. The destruction, in many ways, mirrors the broader decline of rural communities in western Canada.
— The Guardian
For The Guardian, journalist Leyland Cecco on the struggle of small agricultural communities in Canada's prairie provinces to preserve their aging, wooden grain elevators as cultural heritage monuments. Restored Alberta Wheat Pool elevators at the Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre in... View full entry
[Ali] Piwowar, who studied at Carleton University in Ottawa, wrote her masters thesis in architecture on preserving the heritage of grain elevators by transforming them into community spaces.
Saskatchewan once had over 3,000 wooden grain elevators. One by one, however, the structures have been disappearing from the skyline, victims of changing economic and transportation conditions. Today, Piwowar estimates there are around 400 such elevators remaining with only 80 in working order.
— cbc.ca
More from the world of grain elevators and their reuse potentials:The Evil, Evil Grain Elevator: Places Journal studies how grain elevators can seem both friendly and terrifying.Stored Potential launches: a 2010 competition for an "iconic vacant grain elevator near downtown Omaha".The Wassaic... View full entry
