Ciudad Libertad Havana
Tom Joseph
British
The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
An autonomous space of education
Ciudad Libertad questions the value of autocratic education in an evermore connected yet atomized world. The socialist island of Cuba presents a unique socio-political condition clearly highlighting the disjunction between a traditional ‘good’ education and a fulfilled, contented life.
Here, an authority enforces a rigid set of teachings. This regimented approach, coupled with limited access to information and global connections, doesn’t conduce the free-thought and lateral thinking required to become self-determined.
Welcome to Cuidad Libertad, a platform for learning though free-thinking and experimentation. Assuming a level of autonomy from the State, it is a place of connectivity, with uninhibited access to the internet and secure servers to build autonomous digital-archives.
Reflections upon the implications and paradoxes of Autonomy, spawned the design of a space that enables fluid, autonomous groups to emerge at multiple scales. Autonomous nodes are spread over a large flexible site within which clusters of differentiated spaces are scattered around a circulation-cores of communal facilities. Secondary circulation allows the circumvention of the central cores thus bypassing dominant power. The physicality provides enough structure to avoid anarchy with enough flexibility for creative, co-dependant, adaptive autonomies.
A step toward more connectivity and freedom in learning. An architecture of Autonomy.