This workshop is an experiment in prefigurative worldbuilding through speculative writing, annotation and mapping. Learning from existing projects that ‘feel like the future’, presented by Ben Beach, Saio Gradin, Jess Rowley and Aska Welford, participants will use creative methods to consider what prefigurative spaces can be, why they matter and how they demand new directions for architecture. Workshop outcomes will be archived on the Archive of Prefiguration platform and inform new directions for the project.
Archive of Prefiguration is a collaborative, in-progress web platform that archives prefigurative projects: spaces that enact socially and ecologically just futures within the present. Produced by Leela Keshav with the AA Communications Studio, the platform invites contributors to explore speculative fiction – alongside maps, interviews and sound recordings – as a time-travelling medium, projecting prefigurative spaces into possible futures. As a living repository of projects worldwide, the platform positions design as a tool to imagine, narrate and build intersectional infrastructures.
Please get in touch to let us know of any access requirements that you might have and how we can best accommodate these, by emailing publicprogramme@aaschool.ac.uk.