Terra Cotta Mailboxes Make a Statement in UB Hayes Hall

The brightly glazed masonry units can be viewed through a glass wall from the corridor, activating the space.

The University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning had an open house to celebrate the start of the school year. Held in the atrium of Hayes Hall, it marked the completion of the terra cotta mailboxes designed by student Nicholas Traverse and architecture faculty members Erkin Özay and Gregory Delaney. Boston Valley Terra Cotta’s Director of Business Development, Bill Pottle & CEO John Krouse were in attendance as Robert Shibley, Professor & Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, and Omar Khan, Chair & Associate Professor of the Department of Architecture introduced the opening of the mailbox room and spoke about the design.

Manufactured by Boston Valley, the piece, titled “Biblelot,” was selected by a blind jury as the winning proposal in a school-wide competition to reimagine a standard wall of mailboxes. In a reference to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building, each mailbox is etched with a different word of inspiration related to design and planning.

A close-up of the etched & glazed terra cotta units that make up the separating elements of the mailbox system.

The custom terra cotta units combine functionality and ornamentation to transform the mundane task of fetching the mail into a “multi-sensory experience.”