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

02 Brief

REASSESSING DISCIPLINARY TOOLS

These two weeks engage students in reconsidering architectural means of representation at an urban scale in relation to politics and will serve as our first approach to La Habana. Students will be required to complete two exercises to fully recognize the reality of the Plaza de la Revolución before presenting their own design arguments. (2 Weeks)
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Design and research work of Intermediate Unit 8 Architectural Association School of Architecture London UK