In the last several years, a crisis of capitalist development has redefined our understanding of cities in terms of international policy making, political constituencies and individual and collective political expressions in the urban realm. Inter Unit 8 has been experimenting with possible new scenarios for this political readjustment at a global scale, departing from its most basic expressions in the city. As a result, students have constructed innovative political arguments by experimenting with the relationship between everyday material activities–such as waiting for a bus, dancing, chatting in the streets, or wheeling and dealing in the city squares–and a particular material organization. In these common everyday practices, students have found the materials from which to reconstruct the political experience in the city. Manifested in public and constructed as a physical material expression, these everyday practices acquire a political value — understanding the political as what Hannah Arendt described as action in public — and redefine new models of the interaction between the individual and the collective in the public arena.

12.11.09

4th Workshop

W8 VOID: People as construction
16-20 Nov
This exercise considers the Plaza de la Revolución—where Fidel Castro has traditionally addressed his famous speeches—as embodying Cuban politics. As such, students will be tasked with determining how to represent this void while considering that people—not buildings—are what construct politics. The selection of elements to be represented in students´ particular account of reality defines their political reading of the square.


Readings
Roberto Segre, “The Pearl of the Antilles”, in Cruelty and Utopia, Princeton Architectural Press, 2005, pp.134-145.
Hanna Arendt, “Introduction into politics”, in The Promise of Politics, Schoken Books: New York 2005, pp. 93-200.

References - Squares
Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, 1417.
Plaza de la Revolución, La Havana, Cuba, 1953.
Three Powers Square, Brasilia, Brazil, 1960.
Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, Israel, 1964.


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Design and research work of Intermediate Unit 8 Architectural Association School of Architecture London UK