Elite Octane
ASK Studio · Atlantic, IA
Overview
The design was intended to create a good neighbor in the agrarian landscape. This project is about preserving an architectural syntax of rural Iowa. Agriculture has become a corporate business. We can lament the changes in scale and technology or embrace the changes of agriculture by layering the ghosts of a disappearing vernacular in the architecture that will serve rural Iowa for the decades to come.
A machine for working. The rural landscape in Iowa is a tapestry of moving and fixed machines in an orchestrated concert of the perceivable drone of hums and growls necessitated by the production of crops and crop derived goods. This small building is a part of that tapestry and the design was an intentional homage to its place and purpose. The structure is sited in a field, a corner of the “section” eased to make way for another barn. The resolute grid of Iowa agriculture is respected. The orientation is intentionally speaking to the Cartesian grid of the agrarian lands beyond rather than the machinery of the plant it serves, which is aligned with the railroad. The parti is organized from commerce to production. The plan is a double loaded corridor from end to end with the serene view of row crops as the focus of one end and the doorway for truck drivers to enter to pick up “load checks” at the other. A narrative overlayed with its function. Form follows function. With a wink. The materials of the building are simple. All are found in the machines, barns and bins nearby. The assemblage is the poetry of familiar words. The glass is more expansive than the punched windows of barns seen in the distance. The corrugated siding reinforces the grid rather than communicating directly to the curves of the million-bushel bins of the plant it serves. The mesh panels that sift grain in the grainery are visual screens in the assemblage. Not every passage of a poem is intended to be readily understood, but always beautiful when read aloud.
Gallery