You enter the granary and the granary is the building that stands between the harvest and the hunger. The granary stores grain. The granary is dark and dry and cool and the dark and dry and cool is the environment that keeps the grain alive because grain is a seed and a seed is alive and if the seed gets wet the seed sprouts and if the seed gets hot the seed rots and if the seed gets light the seed thinks it is spring. The granary tricks the grain into waiting. The granary is the room where time stops for wheat.

The granaries of ancient Egypt held the surplus that fed the pyramids. Twenty thousand workers eating ten tons of grain a day for twenty years. The granaries at the temple complexes stored the wheat and barley that the farmers paid as taxes and the paying as taxes meant the granary was the bank and the grain was the currency. The overseer of the granary was one of the most powerful positions in Egypt because the overseer of the granary controlled the food and the controlling the food meant controlling the people. Joseph in the book of Genesis told Pharaoh to store grain for seven years and the storing for seven years saved Egypt from the famine and the saving from the famine made Joseph the second most powerful man in Egypt. The story may be myth but the granary is real. The granaries at Amarna stored enough grain to feed the city for a year. The granary was the difference between Egypt and the desert. The desert had no granary. The desert starved.

The grain elevators of Buffalo New York processed two hundred million bushels a year because Buffalo sat at the junction of the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes and the sitting at the junction meant every bushel of wheat from the Midwest passed through Buffalo on its way to New York. Joseph Dart built the first steam-powered grain elevator in Buffalo in eighteen forty two and the building in eighteen forty two replaced the Irish laborers who had carried the grain on their backs up ladders from the ships to the warehouses. The elevator used buckets on a belt to lift the grain and the buckets on a belt moved a thousand bushels an hour and the thousand bushels an hour was ten times faster than the men with the sacks. By nineteen hundred Buffalo had thirty six grain elevators and the thirty six elevators were the largest concentration of grain storage on earth. The elevators stood along the waterfront like concrete cathedrals and Le Corbusier saw photographs of them and called them the magnificent first fruits of the new age.

The granary at Mohenjo-daro held wheat for thirty five thousand people in twenty five hundred BC. The granary was the largest building in the city and the largest building in the city being a granary means the people of Mohenjo-daro understood that food storage was more important than temples or palaces. The granary was built on a raised platform with air channels beneath the floor and the air channels beneath the floor kept the grain dry. The granary had loading bays that faced the river and the loading bays facing the river meant the grain arrived by boat. The Indus Valley civilization lasted seven hundred years and the lasting seven hundred years was partly because the granary worked. The granary fed the city through the droughts and the droughts came and the granary held and the city survived. When the granary failed the city failed. The abandonment of Mohenjo-daro around nineteen hundred BC coincided with changes in the river and the changes in the river meant the grain could not arrive and the grain not arriving meant the granary emptied and the emptying meant the city died.

You stand in the granary and the grain surrounds you. The grain is heaped to the walls. The grain shifts under your feet. The weight of the grain is enormous because grain is heavy and the heavy is the abundance and the abundance is what the granary exists to hold. The granary. The dark room. The Egyptian surplus. The Buffalo elevators. The Mohenjo-daro platform. The building that stands between the harvest and the hunger. The building where the seed waits in the dark. The architecture of survival. The grain is patient. The granary is patient. The hunger is not.