Enclaves: Alternative Forms of Togetherness

After an exploration of the world of social groups and subcultures leading to a definition of Third Natures, Diploma 5 will this year redefine the relationship between alternative forms of being together and their material and spatial infrastructure, taking account of their levels of control, freedom and coercion. We will pay special attention to activities, rituals and events linked to these forms of co-being, their counter-routines, including their feasts and forms of assembly or insurrection. Our aim will be to develop spaces that encourage explicit discussion between individuals, both accommodating and inciting these alternative forms of togetherness.

For Diploma 5 the definition of space cannot be separated from the activities and lifestyles in which it shelters, or the specific cultural context and the technology involved in its realisation. The real challenge of our time lies in the reinvention of alternative lifestyles based on the exploration of new existential territories, literally rebuilding modes of being together. These reinventions cultivate new forms of subjectivity and dissensus as a remedy against the passive consumption of existential forms and preconceived ideas of beauty.

Each student will study, select and develop the formal and cultural autonomy of their proposals, defining buildings as spatial territories that have concrete and distinctive systems of rules, yet at the same time are immersed in a set of culturally defined connections. This year we will be gardeners and explorers of a territory strongly anchored in the present – in a permanent state of oscillation created by the frantic quest for new forms of beauty expressed through models, drawings and writing. We will discuss these media in relation to their cultural material and political context, cultivating a critical approach and an intellectual commitment.

Defining enclaves as a set of assemblies, rituals and feasts will allow Diploma 5 to dream of reinventing alternative forms of being together, in an eager search for an escape from the inherited forms of community and spatial models.

Unit Staff

Cristina Díaz Moreno & Efrén García Grinda are both architects and founders of the Madrid based office AMID.cero9 (cero9.com). Since 1998 they have been teaching in parallel at ETSAM and ESAYA, and have been visiting teachers and lecturers throughout the USA, Europe and Asia. Their projects have been widely disseminated only in exhibitions, biennials and publications of architecture as well as in museums and biennials of art (Sharjah Biennial, 13 March 2013). They have won more than 30 prizes in national and international competitions, and their projects and writings have been published in ‘Breathable’ and ‘from cero9 to AMID’.

Tyen Masten earned a Masters Degree from UCLA and worked extensively in both Los Angeles and New York, and has most recently worked at Zaha Hadid Architects from 2004–12. He has been a tutor at the AA since 2005 and has previously taught with Charles Tashima.