An American Temple: The Empire with Ilaria Forti, Joseph Swerdin, and Barbara Modolo, Verona, Italy

The first nuclear pile, Chicago Pile 1 (CP-1), does not exist anymore. Built as part of the Manhattan Project, the program promoted by the U.S. Government that brought about the development of the first atomic bomb during World War II, CP-1 allowed the initiation of the first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Over its lifetime, the pile was frequently dismantled and rebuilt–counting around 30 different iterations–just as a Japanese temple is, but for different reasons. The proposal to create two full-scale reconstructions of the volume defined by CP-1’s graphite core in the context of the CAB would yield a final iteration of this unique structure.