The project is a response to the practices and ethics of building in the wilderness. National Forests and National Parks come with the mythology that they are mostly pristine preservations of wild land. The reality is that a lot of work goes into these places, to maintain them and to make them safe. They are often heavily managed, but that maintenance is also heavily concealed.

This project – an outpost for a trail repair crew – seeks to challenge the ethics related to wilderness management. Current practices of maintenance in America encourage a curation of its preserved lands that match popular notions of what wildernesses ‘ought’ to be. The proposal aims to prompt a method for designing architecture that asks 'in what manner should people build in the wilderness’ rather than ‘whether’ people should build. The project is concerned with an architectural language that does not deny the impact that humans have on nationally preserved lands, and attempts to form a relationship between the built and the found that is respectful. The aim is to design for the ramifications of building in wildernesses in a way that is considerate. In many ways, the project is an exploration into the marks that humans leave.