The Witnessing Void

What remains of a highland seed vault.

Notes 備考

Seed Library & Memorial

Architecture · 2026

Optional Studio IV

Not merely a facility for storing seeds, but a structure dedicated to preservation, loss and memory.

Under a warming climate, highland species are disappearing. This building is conceived as the Pittsburgh branch of a global network for their conservation: far from the highlands, yet continuously collecting, researching, exchanging and preserving their seeds.

The sunken concrete pit today: people from the highlands meet and exchange seeds among the plants. — The sunken pit, today

A compressed timeline

Semi-embedded in the hillside, the building is an incision between the surface and the underground. Its central axis runs from a greenhouse, through a long, narrow corridor, to a sunken pit.

Long section: the building cuts into the hillside, from the sunken pit through a long, narrow corridor to the greenhouse. — Section AA50 ft

Upper Datum Plan50 ft
Space of Growth
The greenhouse: growth, continuity, life that endures.
Middle Datum Plan50 ft
Space of Transformation
The corridor: its walls tell how the highlands have changed, and observation ports look into the archive and the vault. Here, “living seeds” become “public memory.”
Lower Datum Plan25 ft
Space of Memory
The sunken pit: names of highland species are engraved on its walls, arranged by altitude. A path climbs along them, and you feel the weight of the names.

The names

Endangered and regionally extinct highland species, with the plants of Pittsburgh’s plateau ecoregion selected for local cultivation, and the belts of altitude from the montane to the nival.

Open the drawing to read the names.

Large plan oblique collage: highland landscapes above the building, with plant species grouped by altitude belt, endangered and regionally extinct highland species, and native Pittsburgh plants. — Plan oblique

Wall section from the retaining wall and drainage layers to the insulated seed storage chamber kept at 0 degrees Fahrenheit.

Physical model: concrete walls and a stair descending under a layer of earth.

Physical model: two concrete levels with white storage racks.

Wall Section

Models

One hundred years later

The building’s fate is not one of simple abandonment, but a slower, more pragmatic transformation. The mission shifts from open education toward long-term preservation; as maintenance contracts, the surrounding terrain begins to reclaim the structure.

The same view a century later: bare concrete frames on dry earth, with low walls and skylights in the distance.

The greenhouse today, full of plants, on a green hillside.

From a distance, a feature of the landscape: only skylights and concrete edges remain.

The same pit a century later, older and darker, with one lone visitor walking in.

The sunken pit today: people from the highlands meet and exchange seeds.

Public life fades. The sunken pit is preserved, older and darker.

A void of memory that refuses to be filled.

A compressed timeline

Space of Growth

Space of Transformation

Space of Memory

The names

One hundred years later