ADS7’s main research question is what kind of architecture could emerge if we consider ecology, subjectivity and living, as indispensable political and architectural categories. To do so, ADS7 proposes a way of thinking and designing architecture as a collective political practice.
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.

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.
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 organize 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.