titan ll missile silo

In partnership with Megan Finley

Two speculative proposals that reimagine a decommissioned Titan II missile silo as a museum exploring memory, history, and humanity's relationship with catastrophe.

Overview

The decommissioning of the Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile network left behind a series of underground structures originally designed for secrecy, deterrence, and nuclear warfare. This project explores the adaptive reuse of these Cold War relics through two speculative museum proposals that reinterpret the missile silo as a place of education, reflection, and cultural memory.

The proposals draw from the historical context of the Cold War, when the United States constructed underground missile silos in response to escalating tensions with the Soviet Union. Following the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), these facilities were decommissioned, leaving behind monumental infrastructures whose original purpose has long since disappeared. Rather than preserving these spaces solely as historical artifacts, the project investigates how architecture can transform them into meaningful public experiences.

Mercury x Mesa

Mercury × Mesa reimagines the missile silo as a museum of sound, using audio to reconstruct the emotional atmosphere of the Cold War. Rather than displaying history through traditional exhibitions, the museum immerses visitors in a sequence of soundscapes inspired by domestic life, military operations, anxiety, and mortality.

Visitors enter through the former launch control center, transformed into a ham radio listening room where etched Morse code covers the walls and interactive stations invite guests to create their own transmissions. The circulation path continues through the access portal, where artifacts associated with each soundscape are displayed before leading into the missile silo itself. At the center of the museum, twelve immersive sound installations surround the open silo shaft, allowing sound to travel vertically through the space and connect visitors across multiple levels. A conical acoustic chamber at the top of the structure projects sound beyond the museum, extending the experience into the surrounding landscape.

Unearthing Anachronisms

Set in the year 2500, Unearthing Anachronisms imagines a future in which humanity returns to Earth's surface after centuries of living underground due to catastrophic climate change. During the reconstruction of civilization, a Titan II missile silo is excavated and interpreted not as military infrastructure, but as an archaeological site revealing the culture and values of the twenty-first century.

The museum is conceived as the excavation itself. Constructed from concrete and steel that reference Cold War bomb shelters, the architecture incorporates a suspended three-dimensional structural grid derived from archaeological excavation methods. Artifacts are displayed at the locations where they were hypothetically discovered, preserving their spatial relationships within the site.

Objects are intentionally enlarged or multiplied to transform everyday historical remnants into immersive installations. Together, these exhibits examine themes of conflict, technology, environmental responsibility, inequality, and consumer culture, encouraging visitors to reflect on the decisions that shaped the past and consider how similar crises might be avoided in the future.

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