This conceptual project, developed for the 2015 Architectural League Prize exhibition under the theme Authenticity, proposes four freestanding domes positioned atop earthen mounds at the four distinct "geographic centers" of the United States. These mid-continental points vary depending on calculations that account for the inclusion of Alaska and Hawaii, the curvature of the Earth, or the varying algorithms of modern digital mapping.

Rather than deriving architectural form from these remote, pastoral landscapes, A Project Four Domes re-authors the American prairie by introducing a typology historically alien to it. By isolating the dome from its traditional civic, religious, or political institutions, the project relies on a surrealist pairing of object and environment to challenge old typologies and unlock new formal, cultural, and spatial arrangements.

Biopsying the dome from its institutional base shifts the focus entirely to its raw material and sceneographic qualities. Each of the four structures borrows a traditional plan type—such as centralized, linear, or cruciform arrangements—but achieves an unfamiliar outward expression by using a strict geometric vocabulary composed only from spheres, cones, and cylinders. To elevate the spatial experience, each dome sits atop a manufactured hill.

This earthen mound lifts visitors vertically into the volumetric heart of the structure, creating a compressed sense of interiority rarely experienced in classical dome architecture and opening a contemporary dialogue on a historic structural archetype.