For the Fall 2019 semester, I took part in a studio based around science fiction texts and film as they relate to the concept of vertical architecture. The studio’s structure formed a textual foundation before moving to analysis of form and landscape in science fiction film, investigating the innovations displayed in a pertinent conceptual precedent, and developing a final phase based on these findings. Throughout the course, I developed a trajectory weaving through themes of commodification and alienation, linking texts by Darko Suvin, David Harvey, and China Mieville to the 1995 film Ghost in the Shell and Archigram’s Plug-In City model. For my final phase, I chose to expand on the Plug-In City model to formulate a response to alienation by taking a utopian approach, linking ever-expanding towers and establishing new urban grounds in the air as a way of avoiding the inward social tendencies of the vertical form and opposing urban obsolescence.