An advanced digital reality has led to the formation of new types of collectives. These collectives range from benign yet obsessive fandoms to aggressive conspiracy theorists affecting global politics, from new religious cybersectarianism to collectives simply interested in a shared forum for the distribution of information. It is the inherent nature of the internet as a forum for anyone to disseminate and publish their beliefs that confront, reveal, and embrace the social complexity of our world.

Our world is not simple, it is full of human suffering. In times of tragedy, we turn to storytelling to display real human insights and experiences, to organize and celebrate, to learn and challenge our understanding of our world, of our history and future, and above all, to be reminded of our common humanity. When these networks fail, they have the power to cause immense suffering, and when they succeed, they have the power to lessen that suffering. This is difficult, and requires all members of the collective to burden the responsibility to secure, contain, and protect. This project attempts to understand the SCP Foundation, a collective that takes this responsibility on, and investigates where they fail and succeed.

The power of innovation and engineering coupled with freedom of speech, can solve any problem in the world, but both are necessary. Criticism is essential, but cynicism is not, and in public discourse, cynicism is too easily masqueraded as truth, spreading viral and taking over. This can suffocate the dreams of creative minds who want to build solutions to the problems of the world.

The SCP Foundation has been established to host the proliferation of these dreams.

Through the examination of the collective’s behaviors, rituals, and belief systems, in both digital and physical realms, various methodologies for the architectural expression of the collective mentality are designed through architectural space.