The Possibility of an Island

The Possibility of an Island is an architectural experiment that proposes productive architectures as a model for cognitarian subjectivation and as a solution for the emptying countryside. It does so while exploring the potential of architectural design as a control device in the time where barriers between leisure and work have almost disappeared.

The productive system has drastically evolved in recent years when human intervention is becoming more intellectual and less physical than ever. In this ecosystem of productive evolution, the project takes advantage of the territorial isolation of Nuevo Baztán to implement intellectual productive structures that, spread around the countryside, would recolonise rural areas. This would result in a new understanding of the tipology of the factory, that instead of producing material assets will produce knowledge; will produce people.\nThe center is divided in two areas. The Productive Garden is composed by architectural pieces that host different activities (glass works, sculpture or painting) that are conceived as individual capsules where creativity could emerge. The form of this pieces resemble the ones that compose the rural productive landscape of the area, where barns, water deposits or sheds structure the image of the region. They are all tied together by the surrounding gardens and the digital platform, a generic open space where digital material can be produced. The Leisure Blocks suppose the update of the antique residential blocks of Nuevo Baztán. They are dismantled, keeping the structural walls and facades, and then complemented by a new piece that sits over the old one. The lower floor will host spaces to take care of the bodies, such as a gym, a swimming pool or communal kitchens and laundry rooms that gravitate around communal patios, while the upper floor is the space for resting, were private areas are reduced to the minimum. Interaction and communal life is enhanced in the complex through every design detail. \nThe whole factory is designed over principles of general visibility and discipline, as the ones described by Michel Foucault in his book Punish and Surveillance, that allow to control the actions of individuals and to increase productivity. It renders an ideal community of creators that live inside a rural environment where work doesn’t exist, and where the limits between production and leisure disappeared, initiating the way towards a real biopolitical architecture.