Contemporary Rituals

The exhibition shows a selection of students’ projects that propose new urban prototypes generated from the analysis of contemporary practices and functions that are recognised as contemporary rituals. These actions, when performed repetitively and rhythmically as a sequence of movements, become a paradigm that generate a physical form, which gives meaning to architecture as a constitution and perpetuation of quotidian social relations through the interaction of the body with a structured environment. As such, ritual becomes a space-making device, which whether performed in a group or in solitary, leaves certain physical traces behind, becoming a crucial ingredient in the design of architectural forms. They have the potential to generate spaces at different scales of the city, embracing both the individual and the collective sphere. These are spaces that can be interpreted as a spatial welfare as much as a domestic realm; what they all provide is an emerging subjectivity, which sometimes focuses on a non-human sphere, while challenging the cohabitation between human and other-than-human, otherwise identified with a more canonical archetype of the city form. What these projects have in common is that they all propose new collective formalisations or new progressive forms of architecture in response to new behaviours.