Silo
Studio-wide collaboration
The Silo is a 45-story collaborative tower located in downtown Phoenix, conceived as a contemporary interpretation of a silo; an autonomous building that provides essential resources not only for its residents but also for the surrounding community. Each pair of floors within the tower is designed by a different contributor, resulting in a vertically layered collective project that explores diversity within a shared framework.
The site in downtown Phoenix is integral to the project’s ambition. Surrounded by a wide range of urban activities, including education, commerce, housing, and public life. The location supports the integration of multiple programs within a single vertical structure. This dynamic context allows the tower to operate as both a destination and an extension of the surrounding neighborhood, serving daily users as well as nearby residents.
A defining characteristic of the tower is its continuous “donut” floor plan, which promotes visual connectivity and efficient circulation throughout the building. While this geometry creates a strong sense of cohesion, it also introduces significant design constraints, making adaptability, spatial organization, and programmatic clarity the central challenges of the project.
My contribution to the project focuses on student living, responding to the proximity of ASU’s downtown campus. The residential level is paired with a community-oriented floor that supports shared use, incorporating study spaces, terraces, and informal gathering areas that foster interaction among residents and the surrounding neighborhood.
The tower is divided materially, with the lower half constructed in concrete and the upper half in cross-laminated timber (CLT), expressing a transition from mass and permanence to lightness and sustainability as the building rises.