Monument to the Sisters of the Revolution
Aleksandra Wasilkowska
Patio del COAR
With the collaboration of the Instituto Polaco de Cultura
The collective unconscious and history of architecture are rooted in the utopias of fictitious cities and buildings that have one common denominator: all have been designed by men; think Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, Archigram’s Walking City, the Situationists’ New Babylon, Charles Fourier’s Phalanstère, Yona Friedman’s Spatial City, Frederick John Kiesler’s Endless House, Étienne-Louis Boullée’s Cenotaph for Isaac Newton, Claude Nicolas Ledoux’s Ideal City of Chaux, or Giorgio Rosa’s Republic of Rose Island. In the courtyard of the Official Association of Architects of La Rioja building, an anti-monument has been erected that symbolizes the end of male domination in the history of architecture. On the ruins of bygone utopias, a portent is slowly emerging of upcoming changes: a new, post-patriarchal, interspecies community. The extraordinary time of the climate crisis, the pandemic experience, and growing social stratification point to the need for realigning existing priorities and developing new models of design for all, where all species, classes, and identities can coexist in harmony.
This work is dedicated to women visionaries and architects: Ursula K. Le Guin, Pamela Sargent, Donna J. Haraway, Denis Scott Brown, Anne Lacaton, Lina Bo Bardi, Halina Skibniewska, Zaha Hadid, Anupama Kundoo, Eileen Gray, Kazuyo Sejima, Carme Pigem, Signe Hornborg, Beatrix Farrand.