Description

Architect Eladio Dieste developed the concept for a horizontal silo for the agricultural trust Cooperativa Agropecuaria de Young Limitada (CADYL) to store grain or other powdery material for a short period. This kind of silo is particularly economical as building costs per ton of stored goods are lower compared to costs for vertical silos.

The Young silo consists of a single large space enclosed by a double-bent shell without any interior partitions. The grain storage covers an area of 3,600 m² and has a capacity of 30,000 t. Grain is loaded into the silo at the vertex of the shell, and can be retrieved at the lowest point of the funnel-shaped bottom. A solid shell with a span of 30 m and a rise of 18 m makes up the silo structure. Due to Uruguay’s climate neither thermal insulation nor weatherproofing was needed; hence, the exterior is merely painted in a light colour.

The structure is a compound construction composed of bricks, mortar and reinforcements and typical for the architect. The shape and structural system of the brick structure are reminiscent of reinforced steel structures. During construction work on the shell, the bricks were laid onto the arched formwork without bond. A top and a bottom layer of reinforcing steel are embedded in the mortar joints to generate sufficient bending strength. The masonry received an outer layer of cement mortar 3 cm thick with a reinforcing mesh limiting cracks.

The abutments for the restrained brick shell, which also have an undulating shape, consist of reinforced concrete walls reaching up to a height of approximately 1 m; they indicate the form of the shell. In this way the shell received its arched, regularly undulating form. The shell is dimensioned to resist lateral forces created by the stored goods. These forces cause the main load onto the structure, while buckling risk or bending incidents resulting from wind loads did not pose serious problems.

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Originally published in: Jürgen Adam, Katharina Hausmann, Frank Jüttner, Industrial Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.