In ARCH 254, a student begins Project 02 by rewriting their Montana history narrative from Project 1, tracing how specific events and characters have left visible and invisible marks on the steep Helena site.

They then weave a program into this outline, inserting assembly spaces—stage, backstage, audience, and control booth—alongside lobbies, concessions, and support rooms to build a performance world grounded in the story they are telling. A code-informed site plan forces them to confront occupant loads, exits, slopes, and setbacks, revealing how egress and zoning shape where and how the building can touch the ground. Through adjacency diagrams, they test different arrangements of context, program, and circulation in plan and section, exploring how performers, audiences, and passersby might encounter one another on the hillside. A carefully chosen precedent—such as a thrust or arena theater—is dissected through overlays and synthesis diagrams, providing concrete strategies for staging, sightlines, and spatial intensity. Finally, in a physical massing model, the student translates narrative, code, and precedent into a three-dimensional composition that treats the slope not as a problem to flatten but as an active stage for new collective experiences.