Victor, New York | Area: 17,000 SF

The Seneca Art and Culture Center at Ganondagan is a 17,000 SF visitor center devoted to the history and culture of the Seneca people. It is a public-private funded project with 38% provided by NYS and 62% provided by others. The Center is located on the Ganondagan State Historic Site in Victor New York, which was the largest Seneca settlement in the Genesee Valley in the 17^th century. The Center, therefore, represents the return of the Seneca people to this important village site destroyed by the French in 1687. Today a 1998 reconstructed Longhouse sits on the hill where 150 longhouses once stood. 

The bark longhouse symbolizes the culture and values of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy when five warring nations came together in a mutually supportive union, and agreed to live together peacefully under an imaginary longhouse stretching from the home of the Seneca in the west to the home of the Mohawk in the east.  This union s is depicted on the Hiawatha Wampum belt.  Its white horizontal line metaphorically connecting the nations and extending infinitely in both directions.

Using the Hiawatha belt as a generative diagram, the Center is conceived as a single rectangular structure with a major east-west circulation axis similar to that of a traditional longhouse. Major program elements are located to the south of the circulation spine and secondary elements to the north. The Entry Hall intersects this spine and acts as the building’s functional core.  Aligned with the exterior paths, the Entry Hall bridges the southern wooded entry route with the northern landscaped path that leads visitors up to the longhouse. The approach sequence derives from the traditional Seneca rite of passage known as the” wood’s edge” where a visitor undergoes a ritual purification in preparation for entering the village.  Fire and water elements in the open entry plaza symbolically represent this cleansing ritual.  This orchestration of building and landscape allows the building to serve as threshold element along the visitor’s path from site entry to the longhouse. The historic site and Seneca culture are discovered by and through the building.

The Center is partially buried into the hill to minimize its presence from the longhouse and preserve views toward the south. The elevations are abstracted, and beveled to embrace the sloping site and create overhangs. Large window walls welcome visitors, providing views to the landscape and shaded daylight to the interior. Echoing the smoke openings in a longhouse, skylights are distributed throughout to admit diffuse daylight through deep oculi like sunlight filtering through a canopy of trees.  Efficient mechanical systems and lighting minimize energy loads, and a high-performance envelope protects against the climate.

The Seneca Art and Culture Center supports activities operated by the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and by The Friends of Ganondagan, a nonprofit group whose mission is to honor and promote Haudenosaunee history and culture and echo the Haudenosaunee respect of the natural world.