sALAMANCA: ATTUNED TO ThE EARTh

The Seneca Nation of Indians (SNI) is a Native American tribe composed of eight clans located in Western upstate New York, in and around the city of Salamanca.

Integration with the natural world is a quintessential component of the Seneca people’s history and culture. This proposal is a hybrid spa, bathhouse, and traditional herb garden that seeks to entwine these holistic principles through the medium of material and form. Insisting upon both a symbolic and literal closeness to the earth by virtue of its location, this building is imagined as a monument to the values and practices of the people who live in Salamanca.

ICON As ORNAMENT

In Salamanca, a recurring ornament motif can be seen on several of the buildings. The iconic Tree of Peace insignia is inlaid into the masonry and stone walls. This building pays homage to this application of meaningful iconography upon architecture, using a new set of symbols. The icons for each of the clans that comprise the Seneca Nation of Indians: Deer, Heron, Hawk, Sandpiper, Bear, Wolf, Beaver, and Turtle, are each abstracted into collections of mosaic dots. Their orientation and repetition across the facades and interior walls of the building create a gradated tapestry which affords asymmetry and visual relief to the long volume, and more importantly, which connects the building to its people and their practices. In concert with this, the building also uses locally sourced materials in its construction. Beyond the natural stone that it is embedded into, the vast majority of the building’s material composition is hemp-crete. This alternative to concrete not only boasts impressive technical improvements from its predecessor, but can be harvested from the many hemp farms within the Salamanca region.

gOiNg DEEPER

This hillside retreat can be accessed in two ways. The first is via an existing dirt road that leads to a hilltop parking lot for extended stays. The second, and more experiential, is via a cable car which provides beautiful, panoramic views of Salamanca and its forested hills. Both means of access lead to the roof, which is the central point of entry into the spa.

The roof meets the grade of the hill’s terrain and embeds itself into the hillside’s rocky outcropping. Here, the artificial extension of the landscape provides ideal space for a large, traditional and holistic herb garden. The actions of planting and harvesting for sustenance has deep cultural and historical ties to the Seneca peoples, and this building seeks to dedicate a portion of itself to those practices.

The experience of this building is a partially-natural, partially-artificial subterranean descent that grows increasingly spatially intimate. Floor 4 houses an herb treatment room and herbal cafe as well as offices and exhibition rooms. At floor 3 the building starts to resemble a holistic spa. Saunas, massage rooms, steam rooms, and exercise spaces can be found here. Floor 2 houses the first half of the aquatic program: a large, heated pool, hot tubs, and private baths. Finally, the lowest floor houses a “private” pool that is built into a stunning, natural grotto.