B.Y.O.B - Build Your Own Bunker

As a three dimensional experiment, I wanted to recreate fallout shelters from two different historical eras in order to compare them from an architectural perspective. The first (on this page) is a masonry shelter based on drawings provided by the Department of Civil Defense in 1959. The space is roughly 700 cubic feet in size with an intended capacity of 4 people (single family occupancy). 

I was inspired by Chris Ware’s “Building Stories” (2012), which is a graphic novel that follows the life of the inhabitants of a 3-storey apartment in Chicago. The book is accompanied by templates to erect your own copy of the apartment, including furnishing and the characters in the story. I wanted my project to use architecture to help shape human experiences of the occupants and use the format of the templates/instructions to be reminiscent of the top-down approach to shelter construction during the Cold War Era.