Constructing The Cold War Environment: The Strategic Architecture of RAND

A study of the strategic architecture of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, designed in 1951 and demolished in 2005. A detailed archival history tracks the reciprocal relation between the unique research culture at RAND—the epicenter of strategic military thought during the Cold War and the first truly interdisciplinary research model—and its physical architecture, designed (based on a memorandum written by a RAND mathematician) as a redundant matrix of corridors to maximize chance interactions among researchers and promote creative thinking. What lessons does the abstract, analytical process of RAND's design hold for contemporary practice? What does the story of the RAND headquarters tell us about the climate of strategic thought in the postwar period? The book addresses these questions in the conviction that the RAND headquarters hold an important and unrecognized place in the history of architecture in the second half of the 20th century.