A century after the Bauhaus, UNOVIS at the People’s Art School in Vitebsk, and the Loudreaders that brough an alternative practice of education to the tobacco factories in the Caribbean, architecture is confronted by a renewed urgency for spaces to dream new worlds. In its role as a utopian thinker, the contemporary architect has the potential and responsibility to render alternative ways to live and dream together. Workshops for Other Worlds explores the potential of a campus of studios for alternative ways of living while imagining and producing better, more inclusive and sustainable worlds.
Through form making research and narrative story-telling students will discover a plethora of utopian and radical ideas about making new worlds while developing architectural, structural, urban, and landscape strategies. Workshops for Other Worlds explores through research and design the relationship of pure form and architecture’s capacity to render alternative imaginaries.
Based on the theory of Hardcorism —architecture as Hardcore, pure geometric form, the studio explores the legacy of form by creating a critical genealogy of the use of pure form in architecture and parallel constructions in the realm of modern, post-war, and contemporary art practices. Students will study the principles, challenges and potential of pure form in Architecture, not just by looking at seminal projects like the Nubian pyramids in the Kingdom of Kush, or early projects by Zaha Hadid and Lazar Khidekel, but also understanding the role of form in the evolution of installations in avant-garde, conceptualist, minimalist, land and contemporary art practices by focusing on pivotal works by artists and designers including Theaster Gates, Kara Walker, Isa Genzken, Cao Fei, Elmgreen and Dragset, Ilia and Emilia Kabakov.

A reference of previous student work can be found at loudreaders.org and waithinktank.com education section

Bauhaus 1920
In 1919 Walter Gropius published the manifesto and program of the Staatliche Bauhaus. A new, radical school of design and art founded during the beginning of the Weimar Republic. With one of the most transcendental curriculums, the school also confronted the constraints of old world orders.

UNOVIS 1919
In 1919, the year the Bauhaus was founded, a laboratory to blur with architecture the line between art and life was formed inside the People’s Art School in the small town of Vitebsk. While already in 1918 Marc Chagall had founded the school in what is now known as Belarus, it was the following year that Vera Ermolaeva (who will become the school’s Director in 1920) invited Kazimir Malevich to join from Moscow. Founded by Malevich and with Lazar Khidekel, El Lissitzky, Ilia Chasnik, Nina Kogan, and Ermolaeva among its ranks, UNOVIS (an abbreviation of Utverditeli novogo iskusstva - Champions of the New Art) became one of the first experiments of collective cultural production, developing a collective idea of architecture searching for ways to transform the world.

Loudreaders 1919
In 1919 in the US colony of Puerto Rico, a group of tobacco workers, organized in anarchist syndicates, creating a radical alternative practice of education. That practice grew international networks like vines over the garden of ideology, extending its subversive fruits over the Americas, from San Juan to New York, from Yvor City to Durham, to La Habana to Santo Domingo, blossoming into what some historians call the most enlightened proletariat force in the continent. The practice was simple. While tobacco workers engaged in the boring labor of rolling cigars, they would hire one of their own who knew how to read, to read for them during the entire work-day. As the practice of loud-reading grew, the lectores (loud-readers) will become travelling performers with an international audience, creating new networks of solidarity all around the Caribbean as well as a massive, shared, and open access oral library to workers who were denied any other form of formal education. The books that the lectores read for the workers were mostly books of philosophy or literature that shared an anti-capitalist imagination. The tobacco workers, then, turned the mind-numbing quality of their repetitive, manual, and alienating work of rolling cigars into an advantage, using the same space and tools of their capitalist exploitation to create an anti-capitalist underground culture.

The studio recognizes the powerful irony in this: exploited workers at the bottom of the capitalist global machine, producing tobacco, a highly addictive substance that generates more demand the more it is consumed, schooling themselves in an anti-capitalist culture of liberation through revolutionary books (anarchists, feminists, anarcho-syndicalists) read aloud while working for the same machine they are criticizing. From the perspective of the modern cynic we could imagine the lectores as secretly working for the tobacco corporations serving the purpose of making the workplace more bearable, selling the illusion of an anti-capitalist society in order to make their capitalist machine more efficient. The lectores, in this cynical depiction, would be selling a drug that would keep the workers hallucinating better worlds while being endlessly exploited in this one. This was not the case as the lectores were to employ kynical strategies of subversion, and the tobacco companies were to ban, illegalize, and persecute the loud-readers as the anarchist syndicates kept growing and organizing for better working conditions.

A hundred years after the foundation of Unovis, Bauhaus, and the Loudreaders the studio proposes to reconsider the role of spaces for worldmaking by exploring the relationship between pure form, narrative, and the practices that foster the creation of new worlds.

‘Workshops for Other Worlds’ explores the possibility of Universal Workshops and Architectures of Emancipation.

Critical
If a theory is critical inasmuch as it seeks for forms of human emancipation, critical architecture employs its mediums, strategies, methods, concepts, narratives, spaces and forms to liberate humans from the pressing challenges of our times. In the midst of environmental decay to the point of no return, with the asphyxiating grip of neoliberal capitalism, and the crushing socioeconomic effects of the Anthropocene, the gospel of the Cubo-Futurist Opera Victory Over the Sun seems not so distant after all.

‘Workshops for Other Worlds’ reconsiders the relationship between radical form and radical program, as buildings become inseparable from the emancipating activities, programs and manifestoes they host. Divided in two main parts, the studio will go from pure research to critical speculation.

Students will engage in worldmaking by designing through multimedia installations (drawings, storyboards, film, collages, and models) not only the buildings and the relationship to their surrounding landscapes, but the stories of these Workshops for Other Worlds.

MEDIA

Narrative Architecture and Hardcorism

This studio uses a mixture of Narrative Architecture and Hardcorism as its theoretical framework. Narrative Architecture is a form of architecture that through a mixture of narrative texts and a vast repertoire of images (collages, photomontages, drawings, storyboards, comic strips, animations), creates allegorical stories to explore the potential of architecture, urbanism and their effect in the environment. Hardcorism aims to reveal the potential of architecture as pure geometric form. The studio focuses on advanced tools of research, development and representation, recognizing that there is no architecture without the stories that originate and occupy it. An architecture without narrative is an architecture without self-awareness and criticism. Narrative Architecture invites to raise critical questions challenging our way of understanding the potential and limitations of architecture. In order to address Narrative Architecture, the studio proposes to rethink the history and potential of modernisms and the avant-garde from an alternative point of view. The subjects of study oscillate from the pure forms developed by Malevich, Leonidov, El Lissiztky, Vera Ermolaeva, Lyubov Popoa, Lazar Khidekel, Buckminster Fuller, Iza Genzken, to the philosophical positions of Donna Haraway, Achille Mbembe, Ana Lydia Vega, Luisa Capetillo, Sayak Valeincia and Boris Groys.

Fall
HARDCORIST WOW AND OTHER EMANCIPATORY STORIES
Divided in three parts, the fall semester focuses on the research of pure form, in the design of workshops for other worlds, and in the narratives of ideal collective living by means of model-making, drawings, and the construction of critical images and story boards.

Spring
A CAMPUS FOR WOW
Divided in three parts, the spring semester explores interventions in new landscapes and programs, the expansion of the campus, and the construction of landscape and building narratives by means of moving images and animations.

Reference Projects / Hardcorism
The following references are the starting point of an ontology of Pure form.

Projects
Cloud Iron
El Lissizky, Marc Stam, Wolkenbugel
Additional References:
Steven Holl, Spatial Retaining Bars / Sol Lewitt, Incomplete Cubes

Mattbuilding
Kisho Kurokawa, Agricultural City
Additional References:
Le Corbusier, Venice Hospital /Candilis + Josic+ Woods, Free University Berlin / Constant, New Babylon / Superstudio, Il Monumento Continuo

Architecton
Lazar Khidekel, Aero City / Lazar Khidekel, Architecton /Zaha Hadid, Malevich Tektonik / Kazimir Malevich, Architecton / OMA, Gazprom / XDGA, Pear River Tower / Robert Van’t Hoff, Trappal

Peaks / Speleothems
Bruno Taut, Alpine Architecture/Ivan Leonidov, City of the Sun / Hans Konwiarz, Alstercentrum Hamburg / Superstudio, Conical Terraced City

Courtyard
Ralph Erskine, An Ecological Arctic Town/Office KDGVS, Solo House / Office KGDVS, Cite de Refuge / Georgii Krutikov, Floating City/ Joao Batista Vilanova Artigas, Balneário de jaú

Monument /Megalith
El Lissiztky, Lenin Tribune/OMA, Boompjes 2 / Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International /Konstantin Melnikov, Pravda Leningrad / Studio Kovacs, Cacti / Ugo Rondinone, Seven Magic Mountains

Horizontal Condenser
Vesnin Brothers, Narkomtiazhprom/Piero Portaluppi, Hellytown / OMA, Koninjin Julianaplein / XDGA, European Patent Office / Ivan Leonidov, Narkomtiazhprom

Stacked Boxes
Andreas Angelidakis, Domesticated Mountain/Georges Vantongerloo, Interrelation of Volumes / OMA, Blox|DAC /BIG, Lego House / Moshe Safdie, Habitat ‘67

Polyform
Cedric Price, Snowdon Aviary/OMA, Prada Transformer / JDS Dochodo Sustainable Zoo Island / Bureau Spectacular, The White Elephant

Organs Without a Body
Laure Prouvost, Ring, Sing and Drink for Trespassing / Frank Gehry, Winton Guest House/OMA, Tres Grande Biblioteque (Model)/ Konstantin Melnikov, Rusakov Workers’Club /OMA, Tapei Performing Arts Center

Hyperbuilding
OMA, Hyperbuilding/Cao Fei, RMB City / Studio Kovacs, Bust of Medusa / Andreas Angelidakis, Trollcasino

Spiral
Ilya & Emilia Kabakov,The Palace of Projects/Monument de la Reunification, Cameroun/ Zerafa Architecture Studio, New Taipei Museum/ Influx Studio, Spiraling Garden Museum/ Sol Lewitt, Tower/ BIG, Shanghai Danish Pavilion/ Carl Andre, Cedar Piece/ Le Corbusier, Museum of Unlimited Growth/ Tatlin, Monument for the Third International

Pyramid
SANAA, Neruda Tower/BIG_The five Pilars/ Nogushi, Intentra/ Herzog De Meuron, Forum/ MVRDV, Baltik/ Mujica, tehuantepec/ Eduardo Souto de Moura, CASA DAS HISTÓRIAS PAULA REGO/ Herzog De Meuron, Tate Modern Extension, Nubian Pyramids 

Loop
Isamu Noguchi, Energy Void/OMA, CCTV/ Sol Lewitt, Incomplete Cube/ OMA, Hamburg Opera/ BIG, St Petersburg Pier / Peter Eisenman, Max Reinhardt Haus/ Superstudio, Il Monumento Continuo

Planning References:
Ivan Leonidov, Design for a club of the new social type / Ivan Leonidov, Magnitogorsk / Ivan Leonidov, Lenin Institute / OMA, Exodus or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture / Koolhaas + Vriesendorp, City of the Captive Globe / Frank Lloyd Wright, Broadacre City / Moisei Ginzburg, Seljony Gorod/ Potawatomi garden beds/ 

Arthur Jaffa
Ilya & Emilia Kabakov
El Lissiztky
Zaha Hadid
Ettore Sottsass
Archizoom
Sol Lewitt
Marcel Broodthaers
Hito Steyerl
Theo Van Doesburg
Lyubov Popova
Alexandr Rodchenko
Elmgreen & Dragset
Carl Andre
Tacita Dean
Buckminster Fuller
Vladimir Tatlin
Le Corbusier
Frank Lloyd Wright
Mies Van Der Rohe
Lazar Khidekel
SANAA
Kazujo Sejima
Ryue Nishizawa
Topotek 1
West 8
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Diller + Scofidio
Roberto Burle Marx
Office KGDVS
Dogma
Aureli & Tattara
Petra Blaisse
Roni Horn
Rachel Whiteread
Isa Genzken
Laurie Anderson
Gordon Matta Clarck
Bruno Munari
Joseph Beuys
Marcel Duchamp
Kazimir Malevich
John Cage
Theaster Gates
Christo & Jean Claude
Ivan Leonidov
Konstantin Melnikov
Cedric Price
Vesnin Brothers
Auguste Perret
Lina Bo Bardi
Carla Juacaba
Cao Fei
Olalekan Jeyifous
Varvara Stepanova
Lacaton & Vassal
Liu Wei
Zhang Ke /ZAO
Tatiana Trouvé
Steven Holl
Virgil Abloh
Takashi Murakami
Andreas Angelidakis
Dis Collective
Angela Deuber
Louise Bourgeois
Cerith Wyn Evans
Philipe Parreno
Ugo Rondinone
Esther Klas
Rosemarie Trockel
Sarah Lucas
Amanda Williams
Ai Wei Wei
Mladen Stilinovic
Imi Knoebel
Nam June Paik
Donald Judd
Ana Mendieta
Philippe Parreno
Dominique Gonzalez-
Foerster
Laure Prouvost
Lorna Simpson

Kerry James Marshall
Marlene Dumas
Wolfgang Tillmans
Chris Marker
Luc Tuymans
Ed Ruscha
Bas Princen
Andrei Tarkovsky
Caspar David Friedrich
Neo Rauch
Barkley L. Hendricks
Noah Davis
Pavel Pepperstein
Andreas Gursky
Elia Zhenghelis
Philip Dujardin
El Lissitzky
David Hockney
Agnes Martin
Madelon Vriesendorp
Andreas Angelidakis
Ivan Leonidov
Katja Notivskova
Alex Israel
Thomas Demand
Kara Walker
Gerhard Richter
Luigi Ghirri
LaTurbo Avedon
Venida Devenida
Olalekan Jeyifous
Barkley Hendricks
Jean Michel Basquiat
Cy Twombly
Rene Magritte
Joan Jonas
Blinky Palermo
Zoe Zenghelis
On Kawara
Tatiana Trouvé
Liam Cobb
Harriet Lee-Merrion
Archizoom
Superstudio
Tristan Pigott
Rosa Loy
Edward Hopper
Jacob van Ruisdael
Meindert Hobbema
Frederic Edwin Church
Thomas Cole
DIS Collective
Leon Ferrari
Zaha Hadid

Achille Mbembe
Audre Lorde
Luisa Capetillo
Zayak Valencia
Silvia Federici
George Orwell
Sergei Samyatin
Aldous Huxley
Rem Koolhaas
Boris Groys
Hito Steyerl
Peter Sloterdijk
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Robert Musil
Vladimir Mayakovski
Judith Butler
Aaron Betsky
James Baldwin