Prototype Conversation of Titan II B-5 Missile Silo, 390th Strategic Missile Wing, Davis-Monthan AFB, Tucson, Arizona, USA
narrative - The Titan II Missile Silo Project is emblematic of architecture’s potential to symbolically charge and insert meaning into an inert, outdated facility through the potential of adaptive reuse. The proposal here is to symbolize that the lunacy of the Cold War and the lessons that were learned within this era can now serve as the foundation for an attempt to truly achieve a sense of applied reflection and informed honesty in diplomacy. Through it’s aggressive yet poetically-made point that architecture can convey meaning and modify behavior, it acknowledges that communication is the ultimate tool that can achieve this state and that it is only within this context that true understanding can exist. It is ironic that the remains of one of the greatest destructive weapons that Mankind has ever produced, a device that in its time achieve its rather short-sighted goals of national security, be renewed to serve as a place where events can occur allowing the achievement of this goal in a more rationally evident manner.
Though the Titan II was an technologically sophisticated machine with a less than sophisticated goal, in its remnants a true acknowledgement of the potential of diplomacy could take place. Diplomacy is not as technologically advanced as the weapons of the Cold War, but it can none-the-less contain a greater potential for success. As in epochs past, the architectural endeavor can again show its possibilities to create places that clarify and aspire to achieve even the loftiest of our ideals.
awards - 2013 Western Mountain Region AIA - http://aiawmr.org/awards/design-awards/, 2013 AIA Colorado South - http://www.aiacolorado.org/awards/AIAColoradoSouthAwards/Archive.aspx
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