Endemic Architecture

For this proposal for a public memorial dedicated to the remembrance of Cold War veterans, a marker of time and cultural memory – a bell tower - is re-imagined.

Three distinct intervals of time ring out across this rural landscape; mechanical, celestial, and lunar time. These oscillations recall the varied perceptions of time associated with the Cold War, ranging from the decades long covert nuclearization of the American heartland, to the daily anxieties of nuclear threat.

Time is further indexed by the tower’s copper, steel, and brass shingles that patina into variegated blue-green-purple cones. Large incisions pierce the ground, descending through the earth and into a vast subterranean bunker; a reference to the hundreds of missile silos embedded across the American landscape.

From this bunker, visitors ascend to social, cultural, and educational spaces including a museum, theater, and a belvedere that reveals views of a landscape characterized by the prolonged avoidance of a perilous Cold War ending.

This competition proposal was for the location at the Pritzker Archives & Memorial Park Center in Somers, Wisconsin and is unbuilt.