Influenced by the structural elements of grain elevator architecture, Omaha graphic designer Cathy Solarana chose the subordinate drive shed as her focus of exploration. Drive sheds had their own structural and functional personalities despite being dwarfed by the huge multi-barreled contiguous white concrete cylinders they served. They were as unique and interesting as the elevators themselves, and as the result of Solarana’s research indicates, are quintessential to the representation of the Prairie Skyscrapers. Although humble wood structures, the drive shed function was important: to protect farmers from the weather while unloading their grain. A highly simple structure resembling a wooden lean-to, the drive shed is nonetheless an important part of the uniquely North American ‘architecture of grain’, designed for function and simplicity without unnecessary decoration.
Italian architect Aldo Rossi commented about the American grain elevator:
The Great Plains of America are vast … its villages turned inward as if time had stood still. These people [weren't] seeking America, but escaping Europe, and in [their] first wooden silos [was the] memory of [European] architecture. Over time the silos rose with ever greater assurance and created the landscape of the New World. In abandoning the problem of form they rediscovered architecture.
These new forms began to rise up along the railways of the Midwest — first in flammable wood, then tile, steel, and concrete – locating towns just as cathedrals located the towns of Europe. By the 19th-century Midwestern farming communities forgot their European cathedrals and created a new architecture of pure functional storage. Just after World War I, Europe realized that America had created a whole new architecture with no precursor. Modernist architect Le Corbusier, who held disdain for the pillars and arches of the old European architectural orders as inhumane to the people who used them, revered the functional simplicity of grain elevators serving people and their purposes. These prototypes of functional 20th-century architecture are wonders of the world – clean, anonymous, geometric and simple.
Cathy Solarana believes good design comes from inside the project — one must understand the depth of something before it can be communicated to the world. This is why she begins each project with thoughtful research into what the brand stands for now, and what its hopes to communicate in the future.
Cathy’s resume tells a thoughtful soul search of her own; founding her own small design firm, Visually Speaking, teaching design for nine years at her alma mater, Creighton University, and big agency life with six years at Bailey Lauerman where she created award-winning work for brands like Union Pacific, The Nature Conservancy, Omaha Community Foundation and AIGA Nebraska Chapter. Through this personal life research, Cathy learned that she loves working with people who are striving for something, she loves small businesses, startups, nonprofits … people with big ideas and bigger plans. Cathy likes to get in at the beginning, and be part of making it come true. That kind of work is more than just rewarding to Cathy. It’s inspiring.
Through Cathy’s exploration into grain elevator structure, she created an iconic design style of a simple line and shape. Together with graphic bold colors the drive shed becomes the focal point, rather than a supplemental structure. The use of scale pays homage to its purpose. The giant wheat stalk stands as a representation of all the grains that have filled the silos and fed families, not just in consumables, but as an employer, customer, investor, and a vital commercial hub, for generations. The striped curve pattern in the background is an abstraction inspired by a hand forged silo in rural Nebraska from the 1930′s.
According to author Barbara Krupp Selyem in her photo essay ‘The Legacy of Country Grain Elevators’:
With the increasing demise of drive sheds whose construction was not that of the concrete silo………It is now left to the painter, photographer, historian, and poet to capture the essence of the country elevator. They are the ones who will weave the threads of function, architecture, and social significance into artfulness that will be used by future generations to evaluate and appreciate its legacy.
More of Cathy’s work can be seen at www.cathysolarana.com
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August 3, 2010 - 8:09 pm
August 5, 2010 - 1:19 am
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