During my senior year at SCIARC, I decided that my final studio would be the Desert Studio, taught by Nadar Kahili and Illiona Outram. During the studio at CalEarth, in the California desert in Hysperia, California, we were posed the challenge of designing a school for humanitarian relief in Darfur, Sudan. The plan and volumes are straightforward, because I kept asking myself: Why offer starving refugees stiletto heels in the desert? In this challenge, it was not about developing the most exciting formal design, but rather the most effective use of resources to help facilitate survival.  In the center is a network of partially submersed domes that connect the two schools and offer a safer location or the students in case of an attack. Also, I specified a conical grade for the interior of the camp in efforts to collect any/all water for the garden.