Students will research the extraction of stone, the production of masonry units, and their tectonic language. Medieval cryptographic languages and diagrams will be studied as a means to invent new cryptographic languages for tectonic and construction operations. Students will develop a historical understanding of defensible and sacred architecture to inform new strategies in masonry, security, and sacred programming. Quarry visits will include open-air granite operations in Barre, Vermont, and underground marble mining in Danby, Vermont. Instruction from specialists in masonry, diplomacy, defense, disaster planning, history, and engineering will inform student work, strategies, and research.

The studio asks how architecture can respond to 21stcentury existential threats – AI, biowarfare, pandemics, climate change, weaponized technology – that erode democratic institutions and existing security alliances. Since masonry has historically served both defensive and sacred programs, can a new coupling of the sacred and the defensible produce spiritual and diplomatic forms of collective security for a world where old alliances no longer hold, and can new rituals unite an increasingly atomized society?

Each student will design new masonry systems and cast units that generate space, structure, and light through the innovation of program and site. Working individually, each student designs a place of spiritual contemplation that also offers collective security and defense. Individual projects are sited in a quarry and other locations on earth or in outer space that host security programs and architectural interventions. Students will collectively design a proto-urban landscape that incorporates each of their individual projects.

Students are evaluated on the rigor of their research into material, symbolic, historical, and technical histories. They are also evaluated on the craft, theory, conceptual rigor, and structural logic of their designed and cast masonry projects, including fabrication quality and casting / finishing technique. Evaluation also considers the conceptual and innovative strength of the sacred / defense programmatic coupling and spatial manifestation in the final intervention, along with how effectively individual projects are collectively integrated into a new proto-urban condition. Communication through drawing and model making is evaluated for clarity and inventiveness.

Students will develop hands-on fabrication skills (casting, finishing, and detailing of masonry units) and grounding in masonry techniques – conceptual clarity and technical literacy directly transferable to material driven practice. More broadly, the studio explores existential conditions through programmatic innovations in diplomacy, security, and spirituality, translating them into architectural form with refined tectonic details. Individual works are integrated into a coherent collective urban condition, inventing a new civic order with public rituals meant to unite. Architecture is understood as both a social science and a spatial material art form.