Nuclear Ecologies: making violent atmospheres in Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”

This paper will examine the characterisation of atmosphere in Cormac
McCarthy's 1985 novel Blood Meridian through an on-going doctoral study in
Architecture by Design. Set against an anthology of troublesome desert clouds, the
paper aims to illuminate the complexities in making at a particular extreme – the
construction of contaminated atmospheres – through interdisciplinary making. In
doing so, it moves between a literary work and the American landscape through the
design methodology of an architect and foregrounds the problematics of a work-in-
progress: the speculative design of a “Bath House” from the novel. The project aims
to situate the novel’s desert space as a collection of research objects and explores its
atmospheric environments, how they interact, exchange, and are made material.