In 2018, we will focus on the relation between governance, social movements and architecture, what we define as ‘the architecture of urban revolutions’. The city has historically been the centre of politics, of social transformation and of the constitution of problems, claims and demands. The very idea of the city is defined by conflict, not necessary located in dialectical oppositions but on a field of forces, interests and power relations. This is why the question of governance, inside, outside, in opposition or in parallel with any official or institutional structure, is not only crucial but formative for the definition of an ecological project: each revolution projects a transformation of modes and ideas of governance. Contrary to resistance, every revolutionary process carried implicitly a different distribution of powers in the city. And we argue that within revolutionary conceptions of governance lie as well fascinating architectural and design problems.

Upended buses barricade a street in Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, Aleppo, Syria, Ammar Abdullah/Reuters 2015

From the 1871 Paris Commune to the self-management experiments of revolutionary syndicalism in South Europe in the turn of the twentieth century, from the period of Red Vienna between 1918 and 1934, to the social welfare programmes of the Black Panthers Party in the 1960s and 70s, to contemporary urban struggles of the autonomous Syrian region of Rojava and Barcelona en Comú, the foundation of collectives, the struggles for a different reality, and the formalisation of subjectivities has been inseparable from the struggles for the mode of organising and governing cities.

Free Breakfast for Children Program, Black Panthers Party, Bill Whitfield of the Black Panther chapter in Kansas City serves free breakfast to children before they go to school., William P. Straeter/AP April 16, 1969.

Barcelona en Comú town meeting, Barcelona en Comú 2015

Today again, we observe a fascinating shift in governance, what is often called as ‘radical municipalism’. With its most recognised example in Barcelona, where the social movement Barcelona en Comú won the municipal elections, radical municipalism consists of a model of governance based on direct democracy and the feminisation of politics that has in the right to housing and the city its main objects of concern. A model that, following from Murray Bookchin’s anarchist-municipalist agenda, is today the most important political mutation in the ways in which cities are governed around the world, from Barcelona in Spain to Rosario in Argentina, from Rojava in Syria, to Jackson, US. We believe that this new paradigm offers incredible opportunities to develop unique design research and architectural projects, since it allows students to define the way public authorities, social movements, even corporate partners and industry collaborate in the formulation of urban and architectural projects. It’s a platform that allows for a radical transformation of how we understand scale, how we define urban problems and how we deal with the management of space and distribution of rights and responsibilities in cities.

Local governments are the closest governmental structure to the people, they are managing everyday life directly and citizens across the world feel their presence. But, most importantly it is how local problems mobilise the population and operate as paradigms to discuss broader issues, and to then frame political and urban questions and projects in regional, national and global scale.

In our point of view, the radical and transformative possibility of these new municipal movements lies precisely there. And, it’s what poses a brilliant architectural challenge. Architecture is a practice that has a profound multiscalar nature to organise its complex characteristics and defining parameters. Resources, materials, infrastructure, labour conditions, construction methods, social practices, symbols, ideas and habits, diagrams of use and activities are all formative elements of architectural and urban space.

Competition Entry for Magnitogorsk Town Plan, Ivan Leonidov/OSA 1930

Studio Framework

In terms of design research, the studio will approach the new political developments of radical municipalism through the architectural, technical and political problem of repetition: revolutionary processes and social transformations have always required a thinking of repetition, be it in the relation between the individual and the collective, the cell and the field, the neighbour and the city. In the thinking of the material composition of cities, repetition is the central problem of revolution: it is only through the repetition of building types, of modes of production and of systems of construction (open or closed), that revolutionary potentials can ever be actualised.

The repetition of structural systems, of urban models, the repetition of housing types, the repetition of strategies of spatial occupation, the repetition of social protocols, the implementation of adaptive and evolutionary models, etc. – urban politics is always about models of repetition. Indeed, one might say that is through the ways in which models of repetition were conceived of and designed (in their material, social and subjective dimensions) that processes of radically reorganising cities have either crystallised or managed to actualise new urban potentials.

Cedric Price, McAppy Report, 1973–1975. Portable Enclosures Program,, © CCA. 1973

Kazuyo Sejima, Kitagata Apartment Building, Gifu, Japan, 1998

Year One consists for a LIVE project on collective Equipment in Barcelona. Students will work in groups of 2 or 3 students to address a series of briefs set up in collaboration with the Social Movement Barcelona en Comú. Today, Barcelona is developing new public policies that require the adaptation of the current equipments, in terms of moving away from monofunctional uses and being able to take more advantage of the positive effects of proximity and community projects. Some of these projects are: supervised drug addiction points and shelters, libraries as spaces for the reception of refugees, a health-care cooperative or an integrated services centre.

Year Two will follow the typical format of ADS7 and directly address the brief of radical municipalism. The studio encourages students to propose architectural strategies for an urban revolutionary collective of their choice. Students have to identify specific architectural and urban problems that emerge from the organisation and the activities of such collectives, and address them in both their spatial, technical and subjective dimensions.

As in previous year, across both first- and second-year groups, we promote the focus on popular culture and its semiotics.

This brief is aligned with the research being currently developed at the RCA on Architecture and Social Movements. In this context, the Year One briefs and Live Project will be organised in collaboration with the social movement Barcelona en Comú, with the Municipality of Barcelona and with practices such as Arquitectos de Cabecera or Ateliermob.

In addition to this, throughout the year lectures, tutorials and workshops will be developed in collaboration with Susana Caló, David Burns, Kamil Hilmi Dalkir, Antoni Font, Elisavet Hasa, Samaneh Moafi, Georgia White, Nabil Ahmed.