“Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.” ~ Lebbeus Woods
Let us consider the term “utopian architecture” for a moment. Does it sound like an oxymoron? Must it? Le Corbusier said that all architecture is utopian. How might we change the rules of architecture without throwing away its generative aspects? Like goldfish, we grow to fit our containers. Can we imagine an architecture that increases liberty, propagates communalism, stokes mutual aid, and embraces interdependence?
What would such an architecture – a desiring architecture – look like, and what might it want from us?
Is it modular?
Is it anarchic?
Nomadic?
Ecohousing?
Collective?
Squat?
Freespace?
Inflatable?
Self-sufficient?
Feminist?
Queer?
Anti-capitalist?
Black?
Commune, or Common?
Picking up on the work of visionary architect Lebbeus Woods, architectures of desire will explore expanded conditions of a built environment beyond those intended by an ideologically-driven definition of urbanism pegged to for-profit development, imposed alienation, isolation, and other tropes of the capitalist regime. To imagine such an architecture is to expose the ideology inherent in the way we currently build the buildings in which we live our lives.
In doing so, we will construct a reader and reflect on writings by Rosalyn Deutsche, Lebbeus Woods, Jennifer Bloomer, Gordon Matta-Clark, Paolo Soleri, Daniel Campo, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Marc Augé, Isabelle Auricoste, Jean Baudrillard, Henri Lefebvre, Deleuze and Guattari, Richard Serra, among others.
About Utopia School:
Utopia School is an open-sourced pedagogical project hosted at Flux Factory and elsewhere with the purpose of studying Utopian thought throughout time. The school works on a horizontal, non-hierarchical, and open-sourced model. Utopia school asks: What questions are useful for re-imaging the future?
The first iteration of Utopia School was held at Flux Factory, New York City, in 2015, and was co-organized by Dylan Gauthier, Lena Hawkins, Jamie Idea, Scott Rigby, and many others.
See also the Architectures of Desire class page on the US website.
]]>During the fair, the shed served as cover for the collective’s bookmaking equipment / bindery as well as a pop-up shop for Red76 books, some extra special goods, and other contributions (publications, ephemera) by friends engaged in the fight for housing, shared control of public space – right to the city fights, occupations and re-imaginings of our experience(s) of the urban fabric.
After the fair the bookshed was moved to the lot of Frank Traynor, who was working as an art handler at the fair and expressed interest in it. It was eventually incorporated into The Perfect Nothing Catalog, Traynor’s backyard art shanty/gallery located behind Signal Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
]]>Our work bridges dialogues in art, activism, and science, by remapping landscapes, reclaiming local ecologies, and observing and recording the overlaps of nature, industry, and the polis. ML’s projects connect divergent constituencies with shared environmental concerns, create waterfront narratives ranging from the industrial to the personal, and catalyze the creation of engaged publics. Employing the methodologies of civic hacking, participation, open source, social sculpture, and temporary occupations, our work expands on Lefebvre’s “right to the city” to include its neglected waterways. Mare Liberum is premised on the speculation that water is a commons and the boat as a heterotopia – social platforms that catalyze societal change.
We have presented work at Bureau for Open Culture at MASS MoCA, Neuberger Museum, Maker Faire, the PsyGeoConflux Festival, The New School, Boston Center for the Arts, EFA Project Space, Smack Mellon, Alexandraplatz, and the Antique Boat Museum, and have been written about in Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, Bad at Sports, The Village Voice, and Vice Magazine, among others.
The collective was founded by Dylan Gauthier, Ben Cohen, Stephan von Muehlen in 2007.
The collective is currently:
Dylan Gauthier, Sunita Prasad, Jean Barberis, Ben Cohen, Kendra Sullivan, and Stephan von Muehlen.
For more information, visit – http://www.thefreeseas.org.
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