ABSTRACT
The words “Bring Me Men” are incised in stone the entrance ramp of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Air Force Academy. The inscription engendered a controversy when women were first admitted to this all-male academic institution; should the slogan remain or be removed? The decision of the female cadets to retain the motto demonstrates their recognition of the Academy as a site dedicated to the production of masculine subjects, irrespective of the soldier’s biological sex. But unlike the prototypical modernist open plan, where Cartesian coordinates provide the framework within which forms dynamically shift and slide, at the Academy the grid regulates the articulation and static placement of every architectural element. The ground plane engenders virile behavior in other ways at the Air Force Academy. The collection of campus structures rests on an immense podium set against, and nearly indifferent to, its Rocky Mountain backdrop.
