This is a vertical studio combining students in their second and third year of the march program with students in the maad program, and those in the final semesters of the undergraduate architecture program. The students may choose from a diverse range of options of study proposed by different faculty members. In general the studio options are grounded in a conceptual basis that invites theoretical and/or programmatic innovation. These studio options may vary from year to year.Section description:roar: rural organizational & architectural research:stitched into the american landscape are thousands of intercontinental ballistic missile silos dating from the cold war. The assumed quietness of the bucolic american prairie once concealed some of the worlds most technologically advanced and geopolitically sinister - landscapes. This geographic dislocation from urban centers was highly strategic, and yet while the american prairie was nipped & tucked with billions of dollars worth of military defense infrastructure in the form of icbm missile silos (a kind of technology in the garden), cities across the us were also fortified by rings of nike missile silos designed to shoot down incoming missiles. From san francisco to chicago to new york among many others, 9-15 missile sites encircle(d) metropolitan centers, offering the strangest form of urbanism (or perhaps, sub-urbanism). Today, as military defense strategies shift to other means, many of these sites lay idle, offering a perplexing scenario for reuse. On one hand, their remote splendor offers the potential for leisurely retreat to the american garden, while on the other hand their darker geo-political histories beckon for critical forms of critique and appropriation. These are sites with deep political histories - and futures as well as countryside frontier-scapes that have long captivated the spirit of the west while maintaining covert relationships to urban centers. Thus while we might often think of urban as the city proper, in this studio we will explore extra-urban relationships through the lens of covert militarization as part of the urban works sequence.This studio considers the post-military missile site by proposing controversial interventions, appropriations, and adaptive reuse strategies emphasized by form, typology, materiality, and environmental sensitivities. Each student will be asked to address the reuse of the existing missile silo itself and its associated infrastructure through architectural interventions broadly termed a visitor center, as well as to consider/alter existing landscapes through surface topography (plan) and subterranean conditions (section).In this studio, each student will work individually within their local missile site context, to be chosen by each student. There will be some aspects of individual work that feeds into group research, however each student will be asked to develop a theory of adaptive reuse and appropriation through a series of techniques regarding architectural form, material, and environmental consciousness in relation to broader cultural, social, or political contexts, and which manifests in the design proposal. Considerations for anachronistic types, such as bell towers or belvederes (among others), as well as communally engaged types such as reliquaries or museums are encouraged in concert with current technologies and environmental concerns. To explore these types we will engage formal strategies using compound figures composed with geometric primitives; spheres, cones, cylinders, and cubes.

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